Devil's Chess
by Clockwork Icarus
Summary: When a world-wide earthquake shakes society to it's core- something happened. Anomalies, they're called. Metahumans, mutants, homo superior. Monsters. Freaks. "Misora-san, did you know people say there are no more heroes?" "You want us to become superheroes."
1. Day of Revelation

Day of Revelation 

_Once upon a time, there were no heroes._

"Help! Please, help!"

There was a man at the mouth of the alleyway. Tall and thin and with long hair that hung down his back in a ponytail. The boy reached out and over, over the shoulder of his attacker, over the man that had pinned him to the wall and undone his belt. His fingers made claws and he screamed, screamed for that man to help him.

The man didn't listen.

He kept walking.

 _Once upon a time, the world was_ _ **rotten**_ _. It was mundane and boring and bad and wrong._

"Ai, Rem, help me hang this, will ya?"

"Fine."

A chair scraping against aluminum, a magazine dropping onto a rickety wooden tabletop, the click of shoes across the floor.

 _People were thoughtless, careless, selfish animals, just walking piles of spoiled meat with no soul._

"Help! Please, someone help! Anyone!"

Tears. Screaming and screaming and sobbing and tears.

 ** _It was evil._**

She turned on her heel, balancing precariously on the footstool. The cloth wrinkled.

"Heh, watch it."

"Do you hear something?"

 _"Stop... someone make him stop... please..."_

"...Nah. You're hearing things."

"Oh."

A turn, the clack of a shoe on metal, the swish of hair swinging like a curtain.

 _And then it all changed._

"Whelp, whatddya think?"

"It's good."

"Good?" A snort. "It's perfect, hyuk."

A black banner, two words scratched across it in rickety white.

 _God looked out over what he had made..._

"Grandpa? Grandpa, wake up."

A little kid shaking the body of a still, dead man. A little kid, kneeling in a virtual sea of blood, the lower parts of his jeans red and sodden now.

"Wake up."

There was an older boy sitting behind him, perched on the balls of his feet. He reached out and grabbed the shoulder of the smaller boy. They had the same eyes.

"Nate, he's gone."

 _...and saw that it wasn't good._

The earth trembled. Buildings collapsed. People screamed and fell to the ground. The very sky seemed to shake, waving from side to side in a wild, frenzied dance.

In a small, dark room, two siblings were knocked off their footstools.

One disappeared. One fell through the floor.

In a Manhattan alleyway, a pair of teenagers with long hair and tattered clothing peered out into the street. One screamed for an explanation. The other's eyes turned red.

In a crowded train station, a woman dropped to her knees and clutched her head and screamed that it was much too loud, much too fucking loud. The ticket stand behind her collapsed as her fiancé put a hand on her shoulder. She screamed at him to shut up, to please be quiet. He hadn't said anything.

A child shouted as the world exploded out from under him. Literally.

And a high school student pinned to a wall let out an unholy screech and told his attacker to go away, to go kill himself, to leave him and everyone else alone. His eyes burned. The man listened.

 ** _He listened to me._**

 _That was a year ago._

 _Hamato Sanatorium, Ikeburo district, January 2nd, 2006_

Naomi Misora, aged twenty-five, born February eleventh, 1981. Diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and admitted last March. Previously engaged to Raye Penbar. No living relatives.

That's what he knew.

"Hello? My name's Takashi Shirogane. My aunt's a patient here? I'm here to visit her." Here, he waved a candy bar to prove his point.

The receptionist didn't seem to deem him worthy enough to look up at. Instead she merely typed something into her computer and snapped her gum again.

"You have an appointment?"

He cranked his smile up a couple of watts.

"Yes, I do."

"Okay. Need you to sign this." She lifted a notepad up off the counter. It was open, with the cover and several pages flipped under the bottom. Names and times had been scrawled in the rows by various hands, showing off the visitor's name and time of entrance and exit. It was funny, he decided, how you could tell so much about a person just by looking at what they left behind.

"You need to put your name here, the time you came in here, and the time you check out here." She tapped the aforementioned spaces with a long, red nail and looked up. He could feel her eyes looking him up and down appraisingly, and he let his disarming smile rearrange into a somewhat flat line of understanding.

"Okay," he said after a suitable interval. "Thank you." There was a pen laying tethered to the counter and he picked it up, the thin chain rattling and clinking against the veneer countertop. He smiled and signed a name in neat, looping cursive. The receptionist was progressively turning red, going from a soft pink to a bright, violent color reminiscent of a fire truck.

He turned on his heel with a closed-eye smile. He went one, two, three steps before he froze, the weight of the receptionist's eyes still on him.

"Oh, I almost forgot." He spun and held up the candy bar. "Is it okay if I bring this in to my aunt? She likes them, I think."

The receptionist turned an even brighter red and she stuttered over some syllables in an attempt to form a coherent response. After a few minutes, she merely sent him off with a nod, hands pressed around her mouth. He could practically see the pulsing, anime-style hearts in her eyes as she swooned.

Yes, this is his life now.

"Okay. Thanks!" Vamp up the smile a bit, keep the eyes closed and curved into half-moons, friendly little wave over the shoulder. Good, good.

Open the eyes now.

"I was never here," He said softly and with that, he swept down the hallway, the metal grate that separated the lobby and the patient's rooms rattling shut behind him.

* * *

The plane touched down.

Air whistled off the wings as it settled down into the runway, sliding forward to the airport.

"Ah." He said this around a mouthful of B-quality peanuts, the small packet they had come in crumpled into a red-and-silver ball and tossed carelessly at his feet. He reached over and prodded his partner in the shoulder, hard and with two fingers. She awoke softly, tangled hair brushing over the tanned skin of his fingertips. "We're here," He said, and brought his hand down.

"'Kay." She yawned and stretched, long and lean like some sort of cat. The tops of her sneakers kicked the edge of the seat in front of her, and the bottoms of her upturned, interlaced finger brushed against the underbelly of the overhead luggage compartments. She yawned again and settled down into her seat, sleepily rubbing at her eyes with one hand. The other fished into one of the pockets of her windbreaker, groping around for a couple of seconds before drawing out a curled up rubber band. She stretched it between two fingers and grabbed the bulk of her hair with her other hand, pulling it away from her scalp. She looped the rubber band around it once, twice, three times, pulling it into a sloppy, straw-colored ponytail. Next to her, he reached back and pulled the hood of his jacket up, subsequently zipping it closed. The plane smoothly came to a halt, and a voice came over the intercom, asking them to please unbuckle their seatbelts, take their luggage, and to exit the plane in a neat and orderly fashion.

They hadn't worn seatbelts. Too easy to get stuck in, to get caught.

He had taken the window seat when they had first boarded the original plane, giving anyone watching an eyeful of brawny, blue-eyed redhead. They had waited a good half an hour before switching, he excusing himself to the bathroom and she sliding over into his unoccupied seat. That was the plan. Keep her safe. Keep her protected. Let no one see her.

He stood up, sliding out of their seat in the front and pulling his backpack up in the same move. He rested it one the seat for a moment before slinging it over his shoulder, one strap wrapped around his shoulder and the other hanging loose and aimless. She followed him into the aisle, pink duffle a sharp contrast against the dark green of her rain jacket. It took five steps to the entrance, one after the other. His bag bounced against his back, her's against her hip.

"So, you happy to be here?"

They stepped down, out of the plane and into the airport, down the metal steps that had been pushed up to the vehicle's side.

He smiled, bright and wide. "No happier than any of the other places. Why?"

She snorted beside him. "They have that manga you like so much." She pointed across the wide, wide room, showing him a rack of comics and magazines that stood in front of a shop. "See?"

"Cool."

"More than cool. You sleep with one of the volumes tucked under your shirt. Normal people call that ' _creepy_ '." She raised finger quotes on the last word, the duffel shifted to rest on her shoulder. Subconsciously, he shuffled a little closed to her. He watched her smile soften, watched the light slide off painted nails as she moved her hand down, dropping the other to her side. She had painted them with alternating colors because she couldn't decide one a single one. She never could.

He felt her cold skin as she took his hand, felt the calluses he had memorized as she wove their fingers together. A and B held hands between them, swinging them forwards and backwards as they stepped off the steps together.

"Welcome to Tokyo, Japan," he said softly, solemnly. "Home to freakishly high amounts of whatever the hell we are."

* * *

"Hello, Misora-san."

It was like looking at someone in a black-and-white photograph. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Pale skin. White paper gown. Dark half-circles under the eyes. All shoved together and balancing on a wooden chair, sturdy and bolted to the floor, no doubt. Her legs were tucked into her frame and curled under the hospital gown with her arms wrapping around her, one circling the bulge of her knees, one circling her other side and both of them meeting the other in the middle. Her head was titled down and her eyes were too, almost completely still save for subtle, slight movements of the pupil, tracing the well-known lines of the floor tiling.

She looked fragile, he decided. Skin of paper, bones of glass.

"Are you hungry?"

She responded, if barely. The dark parts of her eyes lifted up, the pupil and iris darting and finding him. She hunkered lower into her chair, dark hair spilling over her back and rippling as she gave him a nod, a little blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of thing. He smiled at her and tossed the candy bar to her.

"Here you go. Kit Kat." He watched as she held it up to the light, the bright wrapper acting like a little red beacon. She pinched it tightly between her fingers, holding it with so much pressure her fingertips went white. She felt the candy bar shift inside the wrapper as it split, breaking into apart like snapped links in a chain.

"I heard they were your favorite. I hope you appreciate how hard it was to get that."

She flipped the bar over, pressing the lettered front of the wrapper into her palm. She found the little flap on the back and pulled, tearing it away from the rest of the wrapper. She dropped the flap behind the hunch of her knees and slid her thumbs into the slit, tearing the wrapper wide open. The chocolate was melted a bit on one side, and the bar was split apart in more than one place. She used to love these as a kid, popping the bars into her mouth and sucking the chocolate away till they was nothing but a thin wafer left. Now she just shoved the whole thing in her mouth and ground it between her teeth, that boy watching her calmly all the while.

* * *

"Okay, ready?"

"Yep! Let's get this show on the road!"

A stuck her arm out in front of her, pointing one finger straight across the room. It landed on a small store front and she started to turn, minute little motions that slowly, slowly carried her to the left. He watched her turn in a circle next to him, expert eyes going over every visible inch of the airport. She was muttering to herself, things about age and glasses and how society was so narrow-minded, really it was such a shame that that hottie across the room was easily twice her age.

"Ooh," she shouted excitedly. It had been a good five minutes since she had started their admittedly strange little ritual and she had finally stopped turning. Her outstretched finger pointed him to a cashier with dark, messy hair and glasses. The boy looked to only be a few years older than they were, maybe seventeen or eighteen at the most.

"He's cute," She elaborated unnecessarily. All the bodies she picked for him were cute. B shrugged next to her, the black fabric of his jacket brushing against her shoulder.

"He'll do." Personally, he thought the kid was a little scrawny for his tastes, and just a bit too tan, but that didn't matter. Those could be fixed, albeit not too noticeably. All that mattered was that she liked it.

"Are you sure? You know I can't do glasses."

She laughed and tapped a fist against his shoulder. "I'm sure."

And with that, B pulled the hood of his jacket down and got to work.

* * *

She ate messily, sloppily. Like an animal. A starved, frightened, cornered sort of animal. He watched the wafer break between her teeth, the chocolate smeared around her mouth by rusty, unused hands.

He would change that, though. Those hands used to deft; quick and nimble. Skilled enough to hold a gun. To shoot it. To hit her target.

That mind used to be sharp, quick moving and clear of distractions.

Those eyes used to be dangerous, cold and unforgiving one second and warm and disarming the next.

That face used to be nothing more than a mask, a fleshy paper face used to gather information, sell herself as harmless when she was so, so very much the opposite.

Yes, Naomi Misora used to be a weapon, and he would make it that way again.

(Except this time?)

"So, Misora-San..."

She looked up at him, brown smeared across the pale, stiff ridges of her lips.

He smiled and thought of paper, a hard white sheet of paper, blank save for the lines running across side-to-side. He cleared his mind and shoved aside the wild storm of thoughts that populated the mind of a genius and stared straight ahead.

(This time she would be on the right side.)

He watched her face clear, watched a fraction of hidden tension bleed away. She leaned forward, forward and into that peaceful, blissful quiet. He willed two words onto that sheet of quiet, blank paper.

"Can you tell me what my name is?"

He watched the wariness go up like flags in her eyes.

(Naomi Misora would be a weapon of justice.)

"Yes," She said softly, unsurely. He leaned forward too, setting his elbows on his knees and propping his face in his hands.

"Will you tell me what it is?"

She nodded slowly.

(He would make sure of it.)

"Yagami Light."

* * *

It hurt.

Every single time, it hurt.

Having your bones elongate, having your very cells die and be pushed to the side by new ones, foreign ones, having your DNA twist and dance and change while your brain worked overtime and oversaw it all?

 ** _It hurt_** _._

It took a good five minutes, a good, long, long, long five minutes for his hair to grow out of his head a different color, for the pigment in his eyes and skin to recalibrate and change amounts. When he was done, he was left with dead hair and skin plastered to the inside of his jacket with sweat and a burning, stinging sort of sensation everywhere that wouldn't go away till this time tomorrow. His breath came out in quick, heavy gasps, and gulp of air he took stung the new insides of his throat raw. A had disappeared in the middle of the procedure and was coming back now, a white plastic cup with water sloshing over the sides clutched in one hand.

He could still pick her out of the crowd, even now when newborn eyes chose to see the throng of people as clumping, blurry shapes and he had to squint and shade his eyes to put up with the light. The sudden movement of his hand to his face jolted, a vibrating sort of feeling striking him and igniting, evolving into to an intense stinging. She shoulder her way through the blurry mass of color and sound and light and came to a stop before him. Her face was a tan blur, her eyes bleeding little spots of green. She held the cup out to him slowly, her nails pinpricks of purple and green. The world around him slowly stared to come into focus, and he saw the contours of her lips bend and curve and twist into a smile.

"Here." The word was loud and booming and he was only slightly aware of her taking his hand and guiding it to the cup, the contact setting off tingles under his skin. She wrapped his fingers around the outside of the cup and guided his hand in the general direction of his mouth. The muscles in his jaw screamed as his mouth gaped open, and the insides of his mouth and throat burnt at the water that went spiraling against them. She helped him take little sips, and they were about a quarter of the way done when his insides stopped twisting at the sensation and halfway done when he took the cup from her and downed the rest in one gulp.

They were getting better at this.

She smiled at him and reached up for his hood. She pulled it down around his ears, taking practiced care not to show off the shed skin cells and matted hairs that still stuck to the inside.

A near-perfect replica of the boy with the glasses stared back.

* * *

He smiled at her, beautiful and perfect and eerie. It was a wonderful smile, the kind that made someone want to cut themselves open for him and show him their guts. It was ethereal, shining with a kind of otherworldly beauty. It was perfect. Beautiful. Amazing.

But not bright.

That smile did not belong on a child.

"That's correct, Misora-San." Something about his manner made her feel like a child again, like a little girl being praised by the teacher for giving the right answer. She didn't like it very much.

"Say, Misora-San..." He trailed off and looked down, tracing little shapes on his knee. She watched his finger move, watched it as it made a little circle, then a triangle, then a square, and then a circle again. And again. And again and again and again.

He liked to draw circles.

"...Did you know that people say that there are no more heroes in this world?" He hadn't looked up at her. He didn't. He just kept staring at his knee and tracing circles.

"It's ironic, isn't it? One year ago, the earth trembled beneath our feet, didn't it? The very sky seemed to shake, and buildings collapsed around us. Did you know, no one knows what happened back then. A world-wide earthquake is strange. But one that can do what that one did? Bizarre. Otherworldly. Ethereal." She watched his lips move. He had stopped smiling when he had first started tracing the shapes on his knee "Impossible."

She hadn't noticed what he was wearing before. It was strange. Usually, that was what she noticed about a person first. It was with most people.

"They look at people like you, like me, and they tremble in fear. They shout and call us a scam and turn and run because they can not see what they are." The smile he flashed was brief and somewhat sinister. "And what we are." He raised his head and looked up at her. The light bounced off his eyes, turning soft brown lighter, turning it the shiny amber of a brown glass bottle. His finger stopped moving. His hands stilled and he took them from his knees and moved them to his lap.

"Do you know how many people have been admitted to asylums they don't deserve to be in- just like you have?"

He was wearing a sweatshirt and tan slacks. The sweatshirt was green.

"Do you know how many people have been disowned by their families because of what happened? So many people have turned away from the light, Naomi-San."

His mouth quirked into a smile. Not the joyful smile of a child, and not the joyless one he had worn earlier either, and not the sinister one. Just a bending of his lips really. For some reason, she thought it suited him better.

"Do you want to know a secret, Naomi-San?"

He leaned forward so that his nose was only inches from her's. His face pitched past her's and came to a stop at her ear. He could feel his breath against the side of her face, his lips only centimeters from her ear, only split inches away. His mind was starting to grow louder, small flurries of thought pulsing and darting in and out and he whispered the secret to her.

 _"I think we're messengers of God, Naomi-san."_

* * *

"Okay, what do you think of the name Elizabeth? Elizabeth Midford."

They weren't at the airport now. Rather, they were in the first internet café they had seen, standing in front of a tall bookshelf. (Well, she was standing in front of it. He was crouching.) It was stocked with volume after volume of manga, colored and drawn faces staring at them from covers and spines.

"Elizabeth? That's not a Japanese name." He shook his head.

"No, but you don't look Japanese. They only really have blonde hair in anime and manga, so... you'd stand out too much."

"Good point. But I have an American accent, and Midford sounds too British." She dropped down next to him, balancing on the balls of her feet.

"Besides, I read one of those once. It takes place in England, and only on of the characters has a Japanese name, and he doesn't have a first name. Or maybe he doesn't have a last name. I'm not really sure. Anyways, you need a Japanese name since you look Japanese." She lifted her hand and reached out to touch one of the shelves. She ran her finger over the spines, her nails making little clicking noises.

"Let's see... eenie meenie miney- you." She stopped her hand and pulled out a manga with a purple cover. She grinned, setting her smile off at an angle.

"Okay, so we'll give you a character's first name and the last name of one of the creators..." She flipped through the book, eyes scanning the words at a speed normal humans shouldn't be able to operate at.

"Congratulations, I dub ye Ryuzaki Rue." She stood up and tapped each of his shoulders with the spine of the volume in a poor imitation of a knighting. He smiled and stood up and swept his arm under his in something like a bow. She handed him the volume and dropped down to one knee.

"My turn. Make sure you pick a good one. I am _not_ going to be a _Darcy_ again."

He chuckled and tapped her on each of her shoulders. He was aware of people staring at them but he ignored them and focused on her. They were used to attracting stares, after all. Maybe not the best thing when you were a pair of homeless freaks moving around the globe just for the hell of it, but they always did. Ah, well. They had learned to cope. They had to.

"Elizabeth Birthday," He said without hesitation. She snickered up at him and stood. Blond hair like straw rustled in its ponytail as she did, swinging slightly.

 _You may now kiss the bride._

* * *

She blinked. Once. Twice. He drew away from her and resumed sitting where he was, back straight and hands folded across his lap.

...Messengers of God?

She blinked, and it wasn't until his lips curled up into a winning smile that she realized she had said it aloud.

"Yes, Naomi-san. Messengers of God. Or maybe messengers isn't the right word."

Huh. When had he started using her first name? She hadn't noticed.

"Think about it, Naomi-San. We can do great things. Some us can disappear. Teleport. Lift trucks with their bare hands, or maybe their minds. You can read minds, Naomi-San. Think of what we could do if put to the use of justice."

Naomi cocked her head to one time. And for the first time in the ten minutes that the boy- Light, she reminded herself- had been with her, she spoke.

"...So you want people like us to work with the police." Not likely, if she wasn't the only one being pushed into a padded room and the world was as in denial as he claimed.

To her surprise, he shook his head. His face twisted into something quick and brief that resembled a scowl. "The police are corrupt. Not all of them, of course, but many of them. They take bribes, they tamper with evidence to further an outcome that suits them and they accuse the wrong people. No, not the police." Something sparked in his eyes. "I'm suggesting that we take this into our own hands."

 _Did you know that people say that there are no more heroes in this world?_

Oh.

Oh.

OH.

"You want us to become superheroes." Vigilantes.

That quirk of his lips from earlier was back. " Not _super_ heroes, not exactly." He leaned back in his seat. "It's strange, isn't it? Heroes have been depicted in books, in shows, in movies- they're everywhere. Children dream of growing up to become them. Adults smile at the posters that show them. But now, now that people finally have the means, the ability to become those heroes they have always idolized, what do they do? They turn their backs on us, on each other, on society. There are individual cases, of course, but it's not enough. In fact, most of the people that can do things are turning their backs on justice- the number of criminals has risen dramatically over the past year, and at least half of that number is directly because of us. Don't you want to change that?"

Naomi spoke softly.

"Suppose I was to say yes. How would you get me out of here?"

"You'll find out tonight. If you say yes." He stood up. "I'll be coming back in at eleven thirty. If you say yes, you'll be free and you'll help me enforce justice. If you say no, you'll stay here, I'll leave you alone and you'll never hear from me again."

He crossed to the door as he said this, closing a gap of five steps.

"Think about it, Naomi-San."

She did.

* * *

 _Hamato Sanatorium, Ikeburo district, January 2nd, 2006 11:15_

Yagami Light was not her first visitor.

Well, of course he wasn't. Raye had come by nearly every day at first, before he had to go back to America. He still came by on the painfully rare occasions he was in the country, and her parents came by every Saturday. What she meant was that he was not her only... unexpected visitor. Unknown visitor.

She had had one only a few weeks ago, sometime around Christmas. She remembered because the nurses had set up a little fake green Christmas tree in the lobby, the branches draped with tinsel and a blue sheet wrapped around the base to put presents for the patients on. Approved ones, of course. Her parents had given her a small book of fairy tales, and Raye had sent her what he called 'The largest box of chocolates I could find.' The man had approached her a couple of days after that- well, nights really. He had shaken her awake with one hand and clapped the other over her mouth to keep her from making any noise. His hands were long and spindly and _cold_ and that was what startled her more than anything.

He was perched on the edge of her bed, moonlight pouring out of her window and spilling across his face. Pale toes were tangled in her bed sheets and he was chewing on one of his thumbs- not the nail, but the actual finger. And those eyes... God, those eyes. She could still remember them- big and dark and so, so utterly _dead_ it was beyond frightening.

"Hello, Misora-San," Her visitor had said. His voice was nice, eloquent and blank, yes, but with a soft edge she hadn't known a monotone could have. "You are quite interesting, you know." She had arched her body up and bit into the pale, thin flesh of his hand. She could feel her teeth sink into his hand, and she could taste his blood.

The desired effect was him hissing in pain and pulling his hand away so she could shout for a nurse.

She did not get the desired effect.

He didn't pull his hand away, he just blinked reproachfully at her with a disappointed sort of look in his eyes.

"That hurt," He said bluntly. He pulled his hand away and she made to scream, but the sound died in her throat. The man wasn't looking at her, his bog, blank eyes staring out the windows. One of his arms was stretched out along his knees almost absentmindedly and she watched a small, barely-there smile twitch across his lips.

"So it does work. Wonderful." Something brown was smeared across his lips, and she realized that the unopened box of Raye's chocolates had been opened, and was now sitting on her bed with the lid discarded next to it. He followed her angry gaze, his eyes lighting up a bit when they reached the chocolates.

"Oh," he said, almost conversationally. "Do you want one?"

Silence.

"You can have one," He said, "If you promise not to scream." He fished one of them out of the box, pinching it from both sides with just his forefinger and thumb, as if it were contaminated with some horrible disease. "I do hope you know I don't share my sweets with just anyone. And sit up, it's not safe to eat things while you're lying down."

She sat up, her back pressing against the headboard behind her. He handed her the chocolate, dropping it in her hand. She waited a beat, staring at it before popping it in her mouth. It was good, a mass of chocolate and caramel melting in her mouth.

"Yes," He said around a mouthful of chocolate, "They're rather good, aren't they?"

She swallowed the candy. "Who are you?"

The man sighed and picked up another chocolate. "So hostile, Misora-San."

"Why are you here?"

He didn't bother to close his mouth as he chewed, and he didn't bother to wait until he had swallowed it all before answering her either.

"I felt like it." He fished into one of the pockets of his jeans and drew out a lollipop, round and pink. "Why are you here, Misora-san?" He said this casually as he unwrapped the lollipop, like he hadn't just asked a mental patient what she was doing in a mental hospital.

"...I'm sick," She said bluntly. The man let out a breathy sigh next to her and stuck the lollipop in his mouth. "There is only a 2.00005% chance that is correct, Misora-San, and even then I believe we are thinking of different types of 'sick'." The lollipop stick bobbed up and down while he talked, a little moving spot of white. He slid off her bed, his bare feet hitting the floor with a slap. He looked like he might be a tall man, towering over most if he was to stand at his full height. As it was, he looked like some sort of cripple, hair shading his eyes and back nearly bent in half. He looked younger than she first thought he was, she realized. He could easily be anywhere between seventeen and twenty-five, maybe twenty-six.

He turned towards her and arched a nonexistent eyebrow- weird. The skin where the eyebrow would have been sorta just stretched, and it put his eyes into focus. He had dark circles under them, like he hadn't slept in a good... oh, five years. Sleeping Beauty's opposite, she thought dryly.

"Shall I let myself out?" He spoke with a sort of dry humor tainting his words. And with that, he had turned on his heel and strode out.

It wasn't until he was gone that she noticed the blankness of his mind, and the blissful quiet he had taken with him.

A loud, metallic rattling was what snapped her back to reality, a monstrous grating noise that meant the metal gate that separated their rooms and the lobby was being opened.

Thoughts were always quieter during the night, as if even the inmates in here thought of night as something sacred and soft and dark. The buzz got larger and louder as people were stirred awake. Hamato's was a place of extremes, of thoughts that were either soft and quiet or violently loud. Earlier, during her conversation with Light, it had been the former.

Right now, it was the latter.

She curled up into a ball on her mattress, clapping her hands over her ears out of human instinct rather than an attempt to make any progress in shutting them out. It didn't help at all, and neither did making herself as small as possible and screwing her eyes shut tight.

She did it anyways.

Through the angry, crazy haze of thoughts, she could make out the _tap, tap_ -ing click of shoes on the tiled hallway floor. They were coming down the hallway, coming closer. They stopped out of her room and she only just heard a familiar voice.

"Open it."

There was the metallic jingle of keys, the scraping sound of something being put in the keyhole, the click of the lock being undone- she heard the door swing open and forced her eyelids apart. Light was standing in her doorway, one of the nurses standing besides him- Hitomi, she thought her name was.

She was holding a brown paper bag, large and with the name of a grocery store printed along the side. Light had his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face. He could hear his shoes against the floor, soft, muted thuds. He stopped just shy of her bed, towering over her bunched-up form like a giant.

"Tough night?"

She managed only a small, feeble nod and screwed her eyes shut once again.

"Don't worry," She heard faintly. "I'm not sure if this will work, but it's worth a try..."

She could hear a rustle of cloth, the abrupt pause that followed it. The thud of him dropping down to one or both knees. A rubbing, snapping sort of sound, and the small click of a button. He took each of her hands and shoved them into her lap. Then he put something into each of her ears and the world was drowned out.

She had started gripping her left hand with her right, nails digging into thin layers of skin and flesh. Her grip loosened drastically, and her hands fell apart from each other in her lap. Her shoulders sagged in relief and her creased brow relaxed and unscrewed her eyes, simply keeping them shut. She stayed like that for a beat before she pulled her legs down and planted her feet on the floor. She opened her eyes and lifted her hands to her ears.

A small, square-ish sort of device sat in her lap and wires ran from it to her ears, pouring obscenely loud music into her ears.

Light stood up and cocked his head to one side. "Is it working?" She could barely hear his voice. Just like everything else, the sound was at the edge of her perception- the rustle of bed sheets as she adjusted her position, the soothing familiarity of her own breathing- even the buzzing mass of thoughts that did not belong to her.

She nodded.

"Good. And you can still hear me?"

She responded verbally this time. "Yes."

He smiled again. "Good."

Naomi stood up, catching the music player in her hand as it rustled against her gown.

"And have you thought about my offer?"

A nod. "I have."

"So what's your answer?"

She gave it to him.

* * *

The bag Hitomi had held a change of clothes- a pair of black jeans, a soft, black turtleneck, a dark pair of sneakers, and a leather jacket with pockets. The jeans and turtleneck were new, and so were the shoes, but she recognized her jacket even after a year. It had been her favorite, after all.

Hitomi took the bag, now holding her hospital gown and slippers and shut the door after them and they walked down the hallway. The gate still hadn't been closed and Hitomi put it back down after they passed under it, hitting a button on the countertop. Light walked to the doors and she followed him, the two of them pausing only at Hitomi's desk.

"Remember," Light said," We were never here and neither were you. If anything linking me back to Misora-san's disappearance is found, you are to destroy it. A body that will be identified as Misora-san's will be found in a couple of weeks. You will not remember anything of these advents. You will not remember me. Tonight, you stayed at home and stayed up late reading. You went to bed around 11:15 and didn't wake up till five in the morning. You will wait ten minutes after we leave before leaving yourself. You will not lock up. You will go straight home then. Let no one see you and act as normally as possible." He gave a polite bow. "Thank you."

Hitomi's acknowledgment came in the form of a dazed little dip of her head. Light took the bag containing Naomi's gown and slippers from her. And then he turned and pushed through the doors, Naomi following after him like a lost puppy. They had made it about two or three blocks away by the time Naomi gave in to her curiosity and exploded.

"What was that?"

Light shrugged. "What do you think?"

Naomi froze and blinked after him for a moment, dumb and wide-eyed. "...Hypnotism?"

"Last time I checked."

She shook herself back to reality and trotted after him.

Light paused at a corner and held up his hand and shouted for a taxi. Naomi stood next to him, head swiveling around on her neck as she took in everything around her with a dose of amazement that may or may not have been healthy.

She was outside. It was cold and freezing winds swept through the streets and made her pull her jacket just a little closer around her. It was snowing too, and little flakes of white peppered her hair and landed on her face. And there were _people_ here. She was able to be near people without falling to her knees, screaming a clutching the sides of her head.

It was glorious.

A taxi pulled up to the curb, spraying their shoes with water and gray, sludgy snow. Light leaned in and opened the door, holding it out for her.

"Ladies first."

She stepped into the cab, sliding to the far side of the seat. Light came in after her and closed the door behind them.

"Where to?"

Light drew a slip of paper with an address scribbled on it out of his pocket and handed it to the driver.

"Here, please. And quickly."

The driver took it, glancing at it momentarily before shrugging and placing it on the dashboard.

"You want the radio on?"

Light shook his head politely. "No, thank you."

"Whatever you say."

The driver closed the plastic screen that separated them from him. Then he pressed his foot the gas pedal and they took off, zooming away through the streets.

Light turned to face her, pulling a key out of his pocket. It was small and metal, with a little plastic circle with a number marked on it in hasty sharpie attached.

"From now on, you are Shoko Maki-san. This is the key to your apartment. Your parents and fiancée had your things moved to a storage unit in Kanto. We'll be withdrawing them tomorrow under fake names. Is that alright?"

She nodded. "Where is my apartment located?"

"In Kanto." Light reached over to the paper bag and pulled out a manila folder, sealed shut with tape to keep the contents from spilling out. He handed it to her. "Is that too far?"

"No," She said, shaking her head and taking the envelope. "What's this?" She undid the tape carefully, lifting it up and crushing it all into a ball.

"That," he said as she opened it, "Is the life and times of Shoko Maki. Driver's license, passport, papers, family life, back story- everything."

Naomi sifted through the documents, lifting up one of her brand new credit cards. She flipped it over to examine the back. After a couple of minutes, she let out a low whistle despite herself.

"These are... well done," She said slowly.

"Thank you."

She put the contents back into the folder.

"You set that woman up, didn't you? When 'my body' shows up, her fingerprints are going to be all over my clothes. You had her put them in the bag and you didn't once touch them yourself."

"It was a necessary evil, Naomi-san. You understand, don't you?"

"Yagami-kun..." She reached into her pocket and fished out a paperclip that had been there for a year. She slipped it over the open sides to keep it shut. "If I had said no, would you have hypnotized me?"

"Well," Light seemed to be examining his nails in the dim light that came from the lights thy passed. "You are a very important person in consideration with my plan.. So..." He put his hand down and turned to look out the window.

"Perhaps, Shoko Maki-san. Perhaps."


	2. Cyanide

_Oops. Forgot this part last time. And I was late with this chapter- my entire family, me included, started barfing our guts up over spring break, so... yeah. The plan is to update every Tuesday, and I'll try to stick to it from now on._

 _So. Hey! I'm Childish 'paw, I'm responsible for this train wreck, and I don't own Death Note. But if I did... oh, that would be one fun shitstorm. So. Enjoy and all! Remember- reviews are the glue that holds the world together!_

* * *

Cyanide

She was different now. Or at least, she liked to think so.

Of course, she also liked to think that she wasn't the kind of person who would screw her brother over for a box of pocky.

Never mind that she wasn't that fond of pocky, or any type of sweet, actually.

(And in her defense, Ryuk was the dictionary definition of 'total dick'.)

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, shaking the thin fabric of her jeans. She sighed heavily and fished around in her pocket for it, drawing it out and holding it up to her ear and accepting the call.

"Hello?"

Anyone watching would've seen a pause, a brief period of silence as the person on the other end of the phone spoke.

"Yeah," she said, "I'll take care of it."

Another pause, then a weary sigh.

"No, Ryuk, that is not suitable dance music. How many times do we have to have this conversation?"

Another pause, this one shorter.

"...Just hire a damn DJ already."

* * *

"Hello?" Light smiled. "We'd like the key to storage unit C8, please."

Most people usually would, at this point, ask who they were or why they didn't have a key in the first place and send them away after learning that, no, they were neither Misora Hideyoshi or Misora Diane. Then they'd report the attempted theft to either the owners, or the police, or both.

But as it was, most people couldn't do what they'd usually do when faced with a hypnotist who could do more than make you cluck like a chicken.

A lot more.

The man at the counter gave a smile that came off as somewhat dazed and opened a drawer in his desk. He nodded and pulled out a small key.

"Here," he said. "This is the spare key."

Light smiled pleasantly and dipped his head. "Thank you. If anyone asks, no one came here today and asked about storage unit C8. You didn't give them the spare key and you don't even know it was gone. You come to the conclusion that you lost it. Neither I or my companion came here today. You've never heard or saw either of us before. Thank you for your cooperation."

The man gave them a dopey grin. "You're welcome. Have a nice day!"

And with that, Light and Naomi went off through the rows of orange buildings and giant metal doors.

* * *

"Y'know, one of us needs to get a job."

They had used some of their leftover money to rent a small apartment. They still had plenty left over, yeah, but still- that would run out eventually. They had almost gotten killed getting that money, because despite everything they could do to defy Nature's laws, everything they were- they were not bulletproof. Therefore, they were never doing that agin.

A popped the tab on her soda and took a swig, Pepsi running down her throat.

"Maybe you could be a barista or something. That'd be funny." It should be noted that she said this as flatly as possible.

So it was one of _those_ days. _Wonderful._

"Yeah, it would." B took a swig of his own coke. "But only to someone who was watching. Otherwise, it'd be boring. Really boring."

"Good point." She swished her soda around in her can for a bit. Then she turned in her seat and held the can upside down, emptying the contents into the trashcan sitting next to her. Brown liquid bounced off the bottom and slid down the sides of the trash bag, pooling together at the bottom.

"We should probably start cleaning up after where we put our stuff if we don't want to turn this place into a shrine to a bunch of junk. If someone in a million years finds the remains of this room, preserved under who-knows-how-many years of dust and rock, they could start a religion- I can see it now. The temple of empty jam jars. You wouldn't want to start a false religion, would you?"

"I bet _you'd_ love to."

" _Yes_ ," He whined, "But you're supposed to stop me! That's your job! You can be the hero and I can be the villain!"

A was still looking down into the trashcan, staring at the little pool of coke.

"Or I could be the corpse and you could be the killer."

He crushed his soda can in his grip, spraying himself with soda and staining his shirt.

"Don't talk like that!" It might have been meant to sound encouraging, but all it came off as was angry. A turned in her seat and stared at him blankly. Across from her, B sighed and dropped his soda can into his lap.

"A, I would never hurt you." He sounded like he was pleading with her. He wasn't. "You know that."

A turned back to the trashcan, watching droplets of soda dribble down the sides of the trash bag.

"You say that now."

* * *

"So, Yagami-Kun, what's the plan?"

They were standing in her new apartment, cardboard boxes and paper bags standing around them like great towers. She was rifling through a box with the word 'Books' written along the side in black sharpie.

"So far, I'm just watching to see if I can find anyone like us. Then I watch them, learn their habits and schedules, and then I approach them."

"...So you're a stalker."

Light lifted a couple of neatly folded shirts out of the box he was unpacking. "Well, I wouldn't call it that."

"The police would."

Light fished out a long coat made out of black leather. The light bounced off the buckles and gave the leather a shiny-sort of quality. He turned and gently laid it on the floor next to him, running it over with his hands to smooth it all out.

"Probably." He undid the flaps that made up the box's bottom and collapsed the empty container in on itself. "Good thing I don't plan on getting caught, then."

* * *

Most teenagers didn't spend Tuesday night like this.

Well, technically, it was evening, but still. It was unusual.

Unless, of course, your surname was Shinigami. After all, who could expect any kind of normal life with a last name like _that_?

"Do you have it?"

The Shinigami were an inherently weird bunch- fingers and limbs that were freakishly long, skin so pale it sometimes looked gray, unnerving red eyes (how _that_ happened, no one knew). So when you dyed and bleached your hair two different colors, you looked beyond intimidating, even if you were only nineteen years old and only had one eye.

"Yeah."

Their middleman wasn't one of them- an oddity. She supposed that was why she had been sent. _'Never trust a Shinigami, for they only trust themselves_.' She didn't know which disgruntled thug had come up with that idiotic saying, but it certainly fit. The man passed her a large gallon Ziploc, contents knocking and clicking against each other at the simple movement. She opened the bag with a sort of hissing noise and started to experimentally rifle through the contents. Dozens of little red pills stared up at her, the light reflecting off their shiny surface.

Cyanide. Extremely deadly, extremely dangerous, and not a fun way to die. Victims spent their last moments in the thrall of pained spasms, thrashing in coughed-up pools of their own blood. She took one of the pills, pinching it and hauling it up by the sides. She held it up to the light, more to see the look on the dealer's face than anything else.

Of course, he wasn't really a dealer. Dealers and thieves were different.

And the Shinigami only respected one of them.

(That was why they had sent her.)

She could see the apprehension playing across his face, the sweat beading on his brow. He was fidgeting too, shifting where he stood and tapping his fingers against the side of one of his thighs.

Eventually she gave a decisive nod and carelessly dropped the pill back down. It sunk into the depths of the bag, disappearing into anonymity as it joined a hundred other pills just like it, two hundred.

(The exact number was one hundred and fifty.)

She zipped the bag shut and slid the duffel bag from her shoulder, letting it fall to the ground. She dropped the Ziploc inside and stared straight ahead at him, her face the same mask of calculated annoyance it had been through their entire meeting.

"And the cocaine?"

The thief's eyes went wide.

"...Cocaine?"

She blinked once. Not in a noticeable way, but in the way that people blinked every couple of seconds.

"Did I stutter? Where is the cocaine?"

"But... I have a week!" She watched his manner change, go from apprehension to anger, to defensiveness.

"Something's changed. We need it early. We need it now." No such thing had happened.

The thief's eyes went wide, and his face split with an ugly smile. "Hah!" Spittle went flying when he shouted, and she reached up with a gloved hand to wipe it away from her face.

"'Need', huh?"

She masked an eye twitch and dropped her hand down to her side.

"Once again: did I stutter?"

The thief pointed a stubby finger at her. "You need me! I'll give you your cocaine for two grand!"

Suspicions confirmed. The man wasn't a dealer.

He was an idiot. A green, brand-new idiot. (And if he was acting beyond irrationality, she blamed that on the drugs that were undoubtedly in his system.)

"...You know, you're really pissing me off."

That's why they sent her.

"If you don't want to die, I suggest you calm down."

"No! You calm down!"

...That just happened.

The idiot pulled a gun on her.

She sighed and shook her head, dreadlocks flopping to either side with the moment.

"Stupid."

 _Bang-a! Banga-banga-bang!_

He fired off four shots. One would've hit her torso, one would've caught her in the neck, and the other two just missed.

Key word when it came to those first two shots. Would've.

"EH?!"

She watched him blanch and stumble backwards. She took one, two, three steps forward, long strides that brought her right up to him. She kept her mouth in the tilted line of annoyance it had been for the past ten minutes and sighed again.

" _Stupid_."

And then?

Then she tore his heart out.

 _(This was why they had_ _sent her.)_

* * *

"Osoreda's ear piece just went dead."

"So we were right."

"If the sudden screaming and lack of heavy breathing is anything to go off of, then yes."

"Okay. Vitals?"

"Heart just stopped. Like it was ripped out."

"So _I_ was right."

" _Yes._ Now shut up, will you?"

"If you two would pay attention to the screen-"

"Shut up."

"But-"

" _Shut up."_

"But the signal's dead."

"...Aw shit, he's right. At least we know that the chips only work when the brain's still functioning, right? I mean, we kinda already knew that, but it's nice to have confirmation, right Mels?"

" _Will both of you shut the fuck up_!"

* * *

She jerked her hand backwards, out of the man's chest. The crushed, bloody remains of what had once been his heart were crumpled in her hand and the sudden lack of support sent the body crashing to the ground. Blood dribbled out of his mouth, staining an otherwise clean body. It looked ugly against him. She turned and started walking, shoes thumping against the concrete floor of the great, empty warehouse they had met in. She didn't stop when she reached the duffel bag, scooping it up and peeling off her gloves as she went. One of them was bloody and stained with body fluid, sticking to her hand and making a sucking noise as she tugged it off. She balled that one up and stuffed it inside its drier twin. Then she dropped them both inside the bag and zipped it shut, not bothering to stop or check to see if the gloves had hit the Ziploc. It was okay if the bag got blood on it. Made it look cooler.

She fished her phone out of her pocket and dialed a number as she crossed the vast floor, each step bringing her closer and closer to the door.

"I got them."

A pause.

"Yeah. He's dead." She came to a stop in front of the door and glanced over her shoulder at the body. She reached forwards and pushed the door open, her single eye locked on the dark shape that had once been Osoreda Kiichiro. She spun her head around to face to face the docks in front of the warehouse and stepped through the door, nodding along to the voice on the other side of the door.

"Okay. Tell him I'll pick him at the library in thirty minutes... you know which library. _He's already there_." She sighed and ran her free hand through her hair tiredly. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be there. Bye." She ended the call with a press of her thumb and slid her phone into her jeans pocket. She turned on her heel and prepared to navigate through the rows of warehouses, all identical to the one she had just left.

"To civilization," she said, sardonic and under her breath.

* * *

"So you carry the five..."

"You forgot to multiply these two."

"Oh."

The scratching of a pencil stopped abruptly and was replaced by the soft rubbing of an eraser.

Next time they decided to study for tomorrow's algebra exam, Sayu decided, they should probably bring someone who was actually good at math.

"...Sayu-chan, we forgot to divide this..."

"Oh, screw it!"

She picked their worksheet up and clenched her hand into a fist, nails punching angry crescents through the paper. Sidoh squeaked next to her as she slowly, methodically balled the paper up. Then she shouted an explicative and tossed it over her shoulder. It made Sidoh duck under the table, and he might've wet himself if a familiar voice hadn't drifted across the mostly-empty library.

Well, familiar to her at least.

"Y'know Sayu, you should be more careful with your language. If Kaa-san and Tou-san heard you..." The speaker trailed off as Sayu pushed her chair out. She didn't wait till she was fully standing up to spin on her heel and it sent the chair crashing to the floor. She stumbled over the downed furniture and she would've slammed into the floor if the speaker hadn't reached out and caught her by her elbows, her forearms resting against his.

"Whoa, are you okay?"

Sayu smiled and tackled the speaker in a hug.

"Nii-san!"

Light smiled down at his sister and reached down to ruffle her hair. He smelled like dust and leather and cardboard and his arms hurt from lifting things all afternoon.

"Hey, Sayu."

* * *

Rem didn't get to the library in thirty minutes.

Getting to the docks with no form of transportation (other than, you know, walking) had been a pain.

Getting to the library via foot was another, especially when you factored in the group of idiots who thought they could take down a Shinigami. There were five of them, burly men in dark coats with guns. Stereotypical, really.

She watched them watch her blink.

And then she spun on her heel and said, "Not doing this."

Their guns all fired at once, a flurry of little golden bullets all whizzing through her as her clothes drooped.

(She would've let them live, really. But one of the idiots got lucky and shot through her bag as it fell.)

She felt the hit more than she heard it and slung the bag around in front of her. It sagged to the ground, red, oval-shaped pills spilling through a couple of holes. The strap and Ziploc were busted too, but those didn't really matter as much as the pills. The alley floor was filthy and she couldn't really go through the streets carrying a see-through bag full of dirty pills. An _idiot_ could tell what she was doing. She groaned and ran one hand through her hair.

 _"Fuuuuuuuck."_

Now she really was going to be late.

* * *

"So, if we do that, X equals..."

"...Five?"

"Correct. Good job, Sayu." Light smiled and reached out to ruffle his sister's hair, Sayu beaming back. Sayu's classmate- Sidoh, or something- blinked timidly at the notebook Light was using to explain linear equations. He startled when Light looked at him, jumping a couple of inches on the steps. The library had closed fifteen minutes ago, kicking the three of them out onto the steps.

"What time did you say your sister would be here? It's getting kind of late." He gestured up at the darkening sky as Sidoh fumbled with his wristwatch.

"Uh... forty minutes ago."

Light sighed.

"Okay. We'll wait ten more minutes. If she isn't here by then, we'll take you to our house and you can call her from there. It wouldn't be right to leave you out here in the dark."

Sidoh gave a timid little nod.

"Thank you, Yagami-Sempai."

Light smiled and held out a hand. "Please, call me Light."

Sidoh looked at Light's hand for a second like it might strangle him. Then he reached out and took it gingerly, their skin really only brushing against each other.

* * *

The woman that came around the corner was covered in blood. Sayu pointed and shrieked when she saw her, and the sound made both Light and Sidoh jump.

The woman's hair looked like it had been bleached and dyed, white with blue at the tips. It was crusted with something the color of rust now, and some of it had dried on her face. It was on her jacket to, and her pants. She was holding a bag in one hand, gripping one of the sides as the broken strap dangled down and brushed the cement. A jean jacket had been wrapped around it and the part of the bag that was visible was riddled with small holes.

Bullet holes.

There was a mess of folders and papers and notebooks spread out across his lap and he struggled to organize them all into one stack. He put one hand on Sayu's chest and gave her an awkward little backwards shove.

"Sayu, Sidoh-kun, there's a coffee shop right around the corner. I want you to go in there and wait for me at one of the tables, okay?"

Sayu nodded her head up and down frantically and reached around him to take Sidoh's hand. The other boy didn't seem scared as much as he was confused- an oddity, considering what Light had seen so far. Sidoh was scared of his own shadow.

Then Sidoh blinked and said, "But that's Nee-san. I need to go." And sure enough, he pointed at the woman covered in blood. Sayu froze beside him and Sidoh took the opportunity to slip his hand out of her's.

Light watched the woman- Rem, Sidoh had called her earlier, now that he thought about it- as she picked her way through the crowd of staring, gawking people. She was taller than most, standing almost a foot taller than them all. People stared at her for a couple of minutes before turning and going back to their work, because this was Japan and weirder things had happened.

She came to a stop in front of them and Light realized that not all of the blood on her was dried.

It was especially thick on her hands, like she had shoved her hand into someone's chest and then ripped it back out again. Her figure blotted out the street lights, casting the three of them into darkness. When she spoke, it was a deep, rattling noise in her chest. Light was eerily reminded of a talking skeleton.

"Thank you for watching my brother, student-san."

Light blinked. "Oh, that'd be Sayu, actually. I'm her brother, Light." He refrained from offering a handshake.

"Thank you, Light-kun, Sayu-chan." Rem inclined her head in a vague shadow of a polite bow. Sidoh stood up next to him and actually gave them a bow that wasn't a half-assed motion.

"Thank you Light-Sempai, Sayu-chan," He echoed, and Light watched them walk off.

(Something's off.)

* * *

"You want me to follow her?"

"Yes."

The Shinigami.

A really weird family.

A really weird-ass _crime_ family.

Or at least, people thought they were a crime family. No evidence had been found yet, but really- an idiot could figure it out.

What an idiot _couldn't_ figure out was how to turn up the evidence to actually _prove_ it.

Which is why Naomi was currently so incredulous. Even if she's only known him for about a few days now, this seemed decidedly unlike Light.

She was slouched forward with her hands folded under her chin, head balancing on her fingertips.

"...Y'know, the Shinigami sound like the kind of people you'd want to take down- not invite to become superheroes. And how do you know that she's one of us anyways?"

"Anomalies," Light said.

Naomi blinked.

"Anomalies?" She repeated him like a broken doll.

Light nodded. "Anomalies. I figured that people like us needed a name, instead of just being called 'us'. So I'm calling them anomalies. And there were bullet holes in her bag and clothes."

Naomi leaned back in her chair. "She was also covered in blood. She won't be the first Shinigami to take a couple of bullets and walk away. That family's practically unkillable- I've been Japan for a year, most of it was spent in a mental hospital, and I know that."

"It was more than a few bullets. And most of the blood was on her hands. People don't shoot people in the hands. It's impractical." Light had been writing in a notebook across from her, and she could see about fifty different equations playing out across the page. Sometimes she forgot that Light was still only in high school, even when he was doing his homework at her kitchen table.

Light started to play with his pencil, spinning it across the top of his cupped hand.

"It was still dripping off her hands when she picked her brother up. And that wasn't the only thing."

Naomi raised on of her eyebrows and took a sip of her nearly-forgotten tea. "Oh?"

"There were bits of bone sticking to her hands too."

Naomi spat her tea back out. Sprayed it all over Light, actually.

There was a beat of silence as Light just blinked at her, a mixture of lukewarm tea and saliva dripping down his face.

Naomi broke down into laughter, guffawing into one hand. Light crossly wiped the tea off his face, reaching over and nicking a hand towel from where it was hanging on the oven handle.

Two minutes later, Naomi was still in danger of dying of asphyxiation.

"Oh... oh God, that was _funny._ "

"No, it wasn't."

At this point, Naomi was once again capable of coherent sentences. "Yes, it was, Yagami-kun."

Light sighed. "You're worse that Sayu, Naomi-san."

"What are you going to do about Sayu?"

That seemed to catch Light off guard. "...I'm sorry?"

Naomi stood up with her empty mug and went to the sink. "Well, she's friends with that boy, and apparently his sister had blood and bone all over her hands..." She put the mug down on the bottom of the sink.

"I told her to stay away from him. I don't know if she'll listen."

"Anyways Yagami-kun, I don't think this is a good idea. I'm lucky I can move around this apartment without the headphones, and sometimes I have to put them back in because of the maniacs who live under me. Besides, how do we even know if this girl is one of u- an anomaly. And shouldn't we know what she can do before we go in half-cocked?"

"I already know what she can do," Light said as Naomi retook her seat at the table.

"None of the blood was her's, and her clothes weren't just bloody and full of holes- there was dirt on the hem of her shirt and the cuffs of her jeans, and her clothes were all wrinkled, as if she'd been taking them off and putting them back on a lot."

Light kept spinning the pencil on the edge of his hand.

"Intangibility. In other words..." The pen stopped abruptly. He reached down and scribbled down some numbers. "I believe Shinigami Rem-san can walk through walls- or shove her hand through people's chests, as it is. And while she is indisputably evil, and while your control is minimal at best, the latter is a necessary gamble and the former is a necessary evil." Light shut his notebook with a snap.

"No price is too great for justice."

* * *

"When I told you to hire a DJ, this was not what I meant."

"But what better way than picking random people off the street? It will be so _amusing_ , hyuk, hyuk."

Rem picked at her nails.

"Yes, and then I'll need to fire them for incompetence."

Ryuk snorted, holding the simple black notebook closer. "Come on, how hard can it be? They'll just need to play songs."

Rem rolled her eyes as Ryuk started towards the window. She sighed and pulled herself to her feet, following after him.

"How has this club not already failed horribly in the past year?"

Ryuk grinned- well, he was always grinning. What she meant was that her brother's smile once again utterly obliviated human proportions.

Luck," he said and swung the window open. "A whole ton of luck."

He stretched his arms out and dropped the notebook out the window.

* * *

One week.

He had to put up with this for one more week.

You'd think that after putting up with it for close to three years, he'd be used to it, but _nooooo_.

A was slouching alongside him, grinding the remainder of her fries into mush with her thumb and forefinger. He had taken her out to eat- cheeseburgers and fries. Her favorite. He always did it when these periods rolled around- taken her out to eat at her favorite restaurants, or the closest thing to them. He had to make sure she ate enough, after all.

She never ate enough during these periods.

He had gone about two steps when he realized A wasn't walking next to him anymore. She was standing behind him with a... with a notebook balancing on her head.

He blinked. "...Where'd that come from?"

A reached up and pulled the notebook off her head. He watched her flip open the cover and skim through the pages. "It fell out of the sky. And it's some kind of register. It has nothing but names and dates in it."

B hadn't even gotten the chance to walk up to her when a voice sounded above them. It wasn't a very nice voice, and should've made their skin crawl.

It didn't.

"Hey, brats!" The man's entire upper body was almost out of the window. It really was a miracle he didn't go crashing to the sidewalk below.

"Wanna a job?!"

Something moved behind him. A woman, B realized, with white-and-blue hair. She was holding him by his waist. So that's why he wasn't splattered across the concrete.

A blinked up at him.

"...What."

"...You want us to work at your club."

"Yep!"

"...And you decided this by leaning out of your window and dropping your notebook on us."

"Not you in paticular, and the notebook isn't mine, but close enough!"

B blinked. Then he smiled and clapped his hands together. "Okay," he chimed. "We'll do it~!"

A rolled her eyes beside him. "No, we won't," She said dryly.

The man had introduced himself as Ryuk- no surname, just Ryuk, and the woman as Rem. They were both tall and gangly in an unnatural sort of way, with red eyes that didn't belong in human faces. Rem's hair was short, hanging around her neck, and Ryuk's was a tall, erect shock of navy blue hair. He wouldn't stop smiling, and A decided he was wearing some kind of lipstick- it was much too thick, too dark to be lip gloss. He had one ear piercing, a heart the color of pitch that dangled from a silver chain in his left ear. Rem had piercings too, large, thick golden hoops like the kind pirates wore in movies.

A was still holding the notebook, idly flipping through the pages. Depressed period or maniac period, A was still curious- a side effect, they had decided.

"...What is this?" This was why they needed to get the job. "There are all sorts of names in here, from all sorts of cultures, in all sorts of languages, so it can't be a registry of the people who attend your club. And these dates- they're all from about a year ago." She shut the notebook. "You said this isn't yours. Who's is it?" People were good for A, whether she thought so or not.

Ryuk grinned at them, the corners of his smile riding up even further. It was not a pleasant sight.

"Take the job and I'll tell you."

Normally, if asked, A would tell you large crowds were not a good idea. The only time she ever went near them was when B dragged her there, or the occasional trip during one of her maniac periods. Frankly, taking this job was a _horrible_ idea.

A looked Ryuk straight in the eye. "We'll do it. But there are conditions."

Ryuk's smile got bigger, threatening to either split his face or swallow it up.

"OH? That makes things _interesting_!" Ryuk folded his hands on his lap, his long, long fingers threading together. "What are they?"

"Before we start, you have to agree to write these down. And you can't go back on them, okay?"

Ryuk leered at them. Then he pitched forwards and tore a blank sheet of paper out of the notebook. He fished a pen out of his pocket and put the tip to the first line. His fingers looked disjointed wrapped around something as small and thin as a pen, and for a split second A would've believed him to be something out of a nightmare. For all she knew, he was.

"Go."

A held up one finger. "One- I will be your DJ. I will not have to interact with people unless I have to. I will be able to choose my own songs, in both English and Japanese."

Ryuk's writing was sloppy. "Okay, but you'll have to get your own music!"

A nodded. "Okay. Agreed." She raised a second finger. "Two- my companion will be my assistant. We come together, Ryuk-San. A package deal."

"Just Ryuk. I don't like honorifics."

"Ryuk," She amended as she lifted a third digit. "Finally," Something darted across her eyes. "You ask no questions."

"No," Said Rem at the exact same time Ryuk said, "Yes!"

Rem sighed and shook her head before leveling a pointed look at B.

"Do either of you even have any experience with DJ-ing?"

They both blinked.

"Uh," A said intelligently.

B rubbed the back of his head.

"Uh... we once stole somebody's car radio and were able to make it work. Does that count?"

"No," Said Rem.

"Close enough," Chimed Ryuk.

Ryuk and A shook hands, his fingers long and bony and gripping her small hand in a way that uncomfortably reminded B of a hawk clutching prey with sharp talons. Ryuk's handshake was a long one, and A pulled away a bit at the end of it. That said, she couldn't actually move away until he let go of her hand. When he did, his nails dragged across the top of her hand, raising goose bumps along her arms. A swallowed and B shifted angrily in his seat, while across from them Ryuk smiled and Rem glared, both unblinkingly.

It was creepy.

"So," B said eventually, "Whose notebook is it?"

Ryuk smiled his great big clown smile at them.

"No idea."

* * *

Heya! How'd you like it? I think I liked chapter one better, but this is good too. I know that the bond between Sayu and Light might seem a bit blown out of proportion, and the bit with Osoreda (Who is canon, actually. He was the busjacker.) both are both very important- besides, sibling fluff is fun to write, and I purposely shoved Osereda waaay past irrationality. Stay tuned for next Tuesday and all! Sorry again for being late! And remember- reviews! The world! Glue!


	3. Disturbia

Hey-o! This... is a long one.  
A really long one.

Soooo... I'm not sure if you guys noticed, but you _might've_ sorta... broken the Earth? See, if reviews are the glue that hold this planet together, and this story has no reviews... you are contributing to the eventual Zombie apocalypse.  
Might wanna work on that one a bit, eh?

Now, on a slightly less 'help-we're-doomed-stupid-zombies-' note, I'd like to say that I own neither Death Note or the song A and B play at the beginning- technically, it was published after 2006, but- 1: I like that song. 2-It fits them. 3-It's hard finding old songs that fit them. Also, I neither have or know anybody with Bipolar disorder, so I apologize if I insulted anyone with my probably-inaccurate description...

Whelp, on with the show!

* * *

Disturbia

Flashing lights.

Screeching music.

The soft rubbing of records against each other and against the sound board.

A was... not bad at her job, not for someone who'd only started a couple of weeks ago. She tugged on the crowd's attention the way cats tugged on string, pulling it in and batting it around. Of course, that was kinda her thing. And if she was better at it during her maniac periods than her depressed periods, B didn't say anything. He just sat back and let her work the music high above the dance floor and the writhing masses and handed her records as she dictated.

"Hand me that one." A kicked her foot out in the direction of a blue crate full of records that pushed against each other and stuck out the top. He handed her the first record- a Fall Out Boy with a cool picture on the jacket. Maybe he'd add that pattern to his face sometime.

A's music was a mix of music from all the places they've been, with American, British and Japanese being the most prominent so far. It was a mixture only A managed to make work, and she did it well. The song lifted off into the air, soft notes mixing with energetic ones. She smiled at her station, the expression threatening to split her face in half.

(Really, she had been spending too much time with Ryuk. But B liked it, so she didn't care.)

"Do you remember this one?" Her first three words matched those of the song and for a second he wasn't sure if he was hearing her or the music.

Then the singer broke off into the chorus and he felt his own smile spread.

 _You were the song stuck in my head, every song that I've ever loved_

"The police station," he said, "Two days after That Day."

A bobbed along with the song, bouncing the way characters in old fashioned black-and-white cartoons did.

"They had a radio on, and this was what was playing. It was the first time we actually heard a whole song all the way through."

 _-spin for you like your favorite records used to, spin for you like your favorite records used to-_

"They let us dance, remember? The waltz. I was so focused on that dance, on that moment-" 'On you,' they both heard in their heads. "-They just let us." She looked up at the ceiling, at the flashing lights.

"You think they would've let us do that if we'd been normal?"

B stood up behind her and wrapped one arm around her waist. "No, I don't think they would've."

"Probably." He started to shift his stance around, dancing half a waltz. A followed along the best she could with her hands on the sound board and his on her shoulders. He rested his head in the crook of her neck, his breath stirring her hair and tickling her ears.

* * *

There were worse places for her to be stuck in, Naomi decided. Music was flooding in through her ears, a clashing mix of Japanese rock from her ear buds and an energetic song in English. The place- Death Note, and why it was named something like _that_ , she had no idea- was only open on Saturdays, and this was her second time here.

The DJ looked young, a bit too young to even be near a place like this, let alone working a job, here, and so did her assistant. The two of them looked familiar too, like she had seen them in passing before. The DJ was saying something, and her assistant was standing up and replying. In some back corner of her mind, a tiny voice reminded Naomi that she should be focusing on the _bouncer_ , not the DJ(s).

For some reason, Naomi drowned that voice out.

The assistant was putting his hands on her shoulders now, and now they were bobbing and shifting in place, dancing a bastardized waltz. Naomi watched him drop his head down to the crook of her neck. He was paler than her, and his hair a dark brown to her straw blonde.

She didn't quite understand what happened next.

She wasn't sure if it was the DJ or her assistant who initiated it, but the DJ was suddenly stepping away from the sound board. Naomi watched the assistant press a kiss to her cheek and the DJ tilted her head back. Their lips only brushed at first, but then they were suddenly pressed up to each other, the boy leaning over the girl with her back to his stomach. She wasn't sure, but she thought two songs were screeching together, the sound piercing and painful.

But people were still dancing (or kissing, or just staring at the DJ and her assistant) so she must be wrong. She felt the wrinkles in her forehead as her eyebrows knit together, and against her better judgment, she reached up and pulled out one of her earbuds. It flopped to her side, hanging by her hip from a white cord.

(She was right.)

A fast-moving Japanese pop song was mixing with the same song that had caused the half-waltz in a screeching, horrific mess that almost immediately made her clap her hands over her ears. The sudden force and motion knocked her other ear bud loose and that one flopped down too, both earbuds hanging from her waist now, where the MP3 player was clipped. The music leaked in through her fingers, and even though it _should_ block other people's thoughts out with it, it _wasn't._

...Well, sorta.

There were only two voices dancing in her head, and they were repeating words over and over. One female, the other male. Their thoughts were strange- little bits of nonsense really, disjointed letters and words.

 _BBBBB- protect, I must protect-can't think-I'll always protect, protect her- I think it's happening- It's happening again- I don't care- AAAAAAA-BBBBBB-You're safe, I promise promise promise-_

Naomi fumbled for her ear buds, clumsy fingers clawing at her jeans, at her waist band. She pressed something, and it wasn't until she felt the lack of plastic against her hip that she realized she had knocked the MP3 player away.

She went down on her hands and knees, clashing music screeching in one ear and two wild, crazed voices chanting in the other. A shiny black shoe heel crashed down on one hand. Pain flooded her senses for one brief moment before it was gone, all gone and the heel lifted up. She felt her eyes lift, locking onto the DJ and her assistant as she fell down on her side. The thoughts were clashing with each other, intense and focused and wild and _loudloudloud._

She didn't understand why she suddenly couldn't move, didn't understand why she was being overpowered by only _two._ Her fingertips were brushing plastic buttons, she could see the music player just a foot from her face. People were still dancing, the songs were still screeching, and the DJ and her assistant were still locked in that kiss.

She couldn't stop focusing on their kiss, like it was the only thing left in the world. She could hear fireworks going off, could feel the taste of fruit in her mouth. It reminded her of the first time she had kissed Raye- every time, actually.

Except this time, she wasn't the one being kissed.

 _It's the DJ._

The realization was faint and numb, coming as her lids slipped shut and focused into some sort of tunnel vision around the two of them.

 _She's the one doing this._ Someone stomped on her fingers again. This time, she didn't feel it.

 _They're all feeling what I'm feeling. That's why they don't care about the music. That's why I'm so focused on the voices._

Multi-colored lights flashed across her face, wan and sweaty and pale.

 _The DJ's an Anomaly._

And the world disappeared around her.

* * *

"Hello?"

Shapes. She could see dark, blurry shapes.

"I think she's dead."

The voice was like scraping bones against each other. It made her skin crawl.

"Ryuk, she's not dead."

"I think she's dead."

"Ryuzaki-san, she's not dead."

"I think she's d-"

 _"For the last time- she's. Not. Dead."_

"...You know what Rem-san, I think she just might be alive!"

Rem... the bouncer. The Anomaly Light wanted her to follow.

Anomaly... the DJ was an Anomaly.

(Lights. A boy kissing a girl and the girl kissing back. Two songs screeching together.)

She sat up. "Where am-"

Cold water splashed across her face. She blinked it away and reached up to wipe at it with one hand. She was sitting on the floor of a large, well-lit room. A kitchen, it looked like. A guilty looking blonde girl-the DJ- was kneeling next to her, holding an empty glass.

"...I swear that you were still unconscious when I threw that."

There were three other faces, hovering on the edge of her perception. They were all pale, two with dark hair and one with white and blue. Rem had only one eye visible, her left one hidden under a clean white medical patch. The eye Naomi could see was surrounded with a handful of yellow shadows of bruises, and Naomi faintly remembered the black eye the bouncer had been sporting last week.

That's about when the voices kicked in. Four of them, two vaguely familiar. (It was strange, Naomi would realize later. There shouldn't be space between her waking up and the voices.)

 _Idiots-bwahahahah the was awesome-bwahahahaha- hyuk hyuk, I can't breathe-y'know, I think they forgot we have a person passed out in our kitchen-I hate them all-well, not technically passed out anymore-bwahahaha-hyuk hyuk hyuk hyuk- freaks, everyone of them-this is certainly a new development-_

She sucked in a breathe and clapped her hands over her ears.

"Hey," She heard the DJ say, "Are you okay?" - _Aw crap aw crap aw crap this is new aw crap I'm gonna get fired-_

She might've been able to deal with them on a normal day, but her head was still pounding from the DJ's stunt at the club. So as it was, Naomi whimpered and clenched her hands tighter. The DJ's ponytail slapped her across the face as she turned to face the other three.

"Something's wrong." - _Holy shit, what did I do to her-_

"...earbuds," She managed to managed to grind out. "Music." The DJ's brow wrinkled.

"She wants some kind of music player. Check her purse."

 _-what?-what?-what?-okay, another freak-_

She could see her purse, sitting on a table shaped like a rounded square, a squat little patch of black leather. A pair of long hands were rooting through it now, flipping through her wallet and turning objects upside down.

 _-credit cards, ID, driver's license, gum, breath mints, lip gloss, phone-_

"No."

"No what?"

"No music player."

The voices were getting louder, frantic.

Then they stopped.

Naomi blinked. She pushed herself to her feet, grabbing the edge of the kitchen counter for balance. Her own thoughts seemed loud as the DJ stood up besides her. Three other pairs of eyes locked onto her and she watched the DJ flinch as if she had been visibly struck.

 _-oops-_ The voices flooded back all at once, filling her head the way water filled a dam when the gates were opened- quickly. Loudly. Crashing. Her grip loosened and she slid down the counter, her butt planting itself loudly on the floor. The DJ's eyes went wide.

 _-the hell-okay, something's going on-this is mildly amusing-freak-Shoko Maki-what am I doing-that's a pretty name-is it one of them-this is new-what is wrong with you, Miss Shoko Maki-_

"Phone," Naomi rasped. "Make a call."

* * *

"Moshi-moshi? Maki-san?"

" _Maki_? That's a girl's name! Light's got a girlfriend, Light's got a girlfriend!"

He was sitting on the couch, Sayu to his right. The TV screen was showing some anime, and Sayu looked away from an exasperated man in a black suit (a butler, maybe?) to laugh and kick her legs against the sofa. Light smiled at her fondly, reaching out to ruffle her hair with one hand.

The voice that came out through the other end wasn't Naomi Misora's. His smile dropped and his hand froze on Sayu's head, elegant, tan fingers stilling amongst brown, brown hairs.

"Light?" Sayu's voice was soft and quiet. "What's wrong?"

He withdrew his hand. "One second," He said. He pulled the phone away from his ear, one hand clapped over it to stifle any noise. He turned to Sayu and smiled.

"Hey, I'll be right back, okay? Maki-san and I are working on a project for school and it's really important, so I'm gonna go up to my room, okay?"

After a beat, Sayu's smile appeared again, shining brighter than the sun. Her eyes curved shut and she flashed him a thumbs up.

"Okay! Good luck, Light! I know you'll do great!"

Light chuckled warmly. "Thanks, Sayu."

He risked taking his hand away from the phone to ruffle Sayu's hair again. She laughed and pouted, sticking her lower lip out at him.

"Light!"

He chuckled and held his hands up in the universal 'I-surrender/holy-crap-please-don't-kill-me' sign. The meaning depended on the context, you know.

"Okay, Sayu."

He smiled and turned on his heel, towards the stairs. Kaa-san had had carpeting installed on them a few years ago, and his shoes made soft little shuff-ing sounds as he went up. His room wasn't far from the stairs landing, only a couple of rooms away. He crossed the space in twelve strides and entered, the doorknob twisting under his hand. He shut the door behind him and went to his desk. He pulled his chair out, sat down heavily. And when he spoke, his voice was acid.

"Who is this?"

The voice on the other end was definitely male and it _laughed_ at him, breathy and hiccupping. It wasn't a very nice laugh.

"Sheesh, you her boyfriend or something?"

Naomi's phone must have been on speaker, because he heard a sigh in the background. There was crackling static and the sound fingers made when they brushed over speakers, and then another voice spoke into the phone, feminine and fast.

"Sorry 'bout Ryuzaki. Are you Yagami-kun?"

"Yes, I am. Has something happened to Maki-san? With whom am I speaking?" He channeled as much concern into his voice as he could. It wasn't that hard, really. The trick to faking emotion was to think of something that genuinely provoked that emotion, and to let the feeling it brought forth wash over you.

It really wasn't that hard.

"Oh, no. I'm Elizabeth- I'm a DJ at Death Note? It's a club. Maki-san just sorta passed out, and the bartender says she didn't order anything to drink, so we figured we'd just call her contacts. Can you come pick her up, or at least give us an address?"

Light blinked. Naomi had passed out... something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

"Sure," He said, still channeling false worry. "Maki-san has a condition... I'll look up the address and take a cab-"

"No, no, I'll give you the address."

"Oh, thank you."

Elizabeth rattled off an address on the other side of Kanto. Of course, he didn't really need it- when you sent out a tail, you generally knew where you're sending them and all- but Elizabeth didn't need to know that.

And neither did Rem.

"Thank you," He said when she was done. "I'll be there in half an hour, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks. She'll be here!" The DJ hung up on him first, without saying goodbye.

* * *

"Excellent show, Misa-Misa-chan!"

"Amazing, Misa-chan!"

"Good job, Amane."

She smiled and bowed to all of her well-wishers, accepting their admissions of wonder- the pleased lighting crews, the infatuated crowds of fans, her gruff, unruffled manager.

"Thank you, everyone!" Blonde hair bounced against her back as she straightened back up, the hem of her skirt cut into her thighs. She tilted her head to one side like a curious bird, the curtain of her hair rustling and shifting and following after her. Her eyes were closed from the force of her smile and her hands were clenched in front of her skirt. Light tinkled off of silver jewelry, flashed away from painted nails.

"Misa-Misa really appreciates all of your support!" Her eyes slid open.

A field of smiles, of sparkles and glowing, happy faces. That's what she saw. They were cheering for her, clapping and laughing and waving signs. And Misa smiled and laughed and waved right back. Misa was happy, and when Misa was happy, everyone with in a three-mile radius was happy.

 _Literally._

* * *

Naomi was sitting on a bench outside of an illegal nightclub with two children, and Light was sitting in a taxi.

He slipped out of the door, handed the drivers a couple of bills and told him to wait. He stepped out onto black asphalt and crossed the deserted parking lot, light from the streetlamps shining off of the rain.

The shower had started on his way here, and when the light reflected off of it, it was like glass was falling from the sky in place of water. Most people might've stopped and stared at it, just for a beat or two and maybe longer. As it was, Light wasn't most people, not even close. The girl stood up as he came closer, and the boy followed after her with Naomi leaning on his shoulder.

Elizabeth was younger than she had sounded over the phone. He'd place her around Sayu's age, with blonde hair like straw and green eyes, round instead of slanted. She was rocking in place, back and forth on the balls of her feet. It made the rubber soles of her sneakers knock against the ground, and a look at the faint, dark circles under her eyes made him wonder if she was on something. Of course, she could just be a jumpy insomniac, no matter how unlikely that option was.

"Hi!" She lifted an arm in greeting. "Are you Yagami-kun? And man, I know she had 'kun' next to your name on her contacts and all, but I didn't except you to be so young!"

On drugs it was.

"Yes", he said, "I'm Yagami Light."

* * *

One, two, three. Black seven. No uses.

 _Shuffa-shuffa-shuff_

One, two three. Red nine to black ten. Black ten to red jack.

 _Shuff_

Four of hearts to three of hearts.

It had been her grandfather who taught her solitaire. Solitaire, and go-fish, and blackjack, and gin rummy too. He used to say there were all kinds of things you could do with a deck of cards, and as long as she had one, she'd never be bored.

(He was right.)

It's a nice deck, worn but in a endearing sort of way, from years of use. Their blacks are gray, with a black, gothic-style cross taking up the majority of space. She has to tape her fingers when she plays with them, the way athletes tape their arms and legs to guard against sprains. Except she's wrapping her fingertips instead of her limbs and it's to ward off paper cuts instead of muscle cramps.

She had gotten cut by her cards once before, and it had been a vicious little slice out of one finger, with skin sticking out in a way that reminded her of the gills fish have up and down their throats. Models can't get hurt, because cuts and bruises and blood don't look pretty on them.

It was raining outside, little pellets of water beating against the walls and windowpanes. Lightning flashed outside, and it lit her room up in ghostly blue. The dress she'd worn at her performance earlier was skimpy and black and in a heap across her floor right now. She knew it'd be all wrinkly in the morning, which really sucked, and on any other night, she might've cared.

She wasn't even really in her pajamas, not technically. She was wearing a baggy black old t-shirt and a pair of ratty sweat pants, dark blue and with a gaping hole in the left knee. Her hair was loose, hanging down her back in a limp, gold mess. Her bangs fell in her face, shading her eyes as she shuffled through her cards. People tended to forget what had happened a couple of years ago, and even though the rational part of her knew they couldn't be blamed, she did anyways. If she couldn't be happy, why should the rest of the world be? How come they get to have families? How come they get to fall in love without risking loosing their jobs, huh? Huh?

She could feel all the anger rolling off her, like the big, dark clouds that float over the heads of sulking anime characters, and she's grateful that there isn't anyone else in her admittedly large apartment. She dealt out another three cards, stiff paper brushing over white sports tape.

 _Shuffa-shuffa-shuff_

* * *

"Here, Naomi-san." Light reached over and slipped the earbuds in. He didn't have another MP3 player, and he'll have to get another one to keep his plan from going to hell, but Sayu's borrowed phone will work for now. He waited till she had relaxed enough to crack her eyes open to speak. Rain was pounding against the taxi windows, running down the thick panes of glass in watery, translucent trails.

"Naomi-san, what happened?"

His parents think he's at a friend's house at the moment, studying and then caught there by the storm. Yuki will cover for him simply because he asked her to, and her parents are out of town.

Naomi picked at her nails, and Light couldn't help but wonder if she didn't know either.

"...The DJ," She said eventually. "The DJ's an anomaly."

Light jumped in his seat.

"I think it's some form of mind control," She continued. "Her assistant kissed her in the middle of a song and she stepped away from the sound board. There were two songs playing at the same time, and nobody... nobody seemed to notice." Naomi fiddled with her jacket sleeve. She wasn't the type of person who liked being left in the dark.  
"I could feel their kiss. It was like I was in the DJ's body instead of mine. And in the kitchen, after I passed out- there were moments when I couldn't hear anyone else's thoughts. Just mine."

Light nodded. "I see...what about the boy that was with her? Was that the assistant?"

"Yes."

"Did he do anything like what the DJ did? Anything strange?"

"No. The girl called him Ryuzaki, and there was another person there. A man who might've been Shinigami-san's brother. I think his name was Ryuk."

Light nodded again and rubbed his chin. "Okay. I'll be staying at your apartment tonight, so we'll see if we can figure anything out then. Do you know what made you pass out?"

Now Naomi just looked embarrassed. "My earbuds fell out. Only two voices got through, but they were so intense..." She looked out, through the window. "I think they were the DJ and her assistant. Even before all that, it was like I could only focus on the two of them, and nothing else. It was weird."

"It sounds weird."

* * *

"...Superpowers wiki?"

The tea kettle whistled, shrill and loud. Naomi reached out and took it from the stove, pouring scalding water into a matching pair of white teacups. Color bled out of teabags and into the water, turning it a dark brown. She set the kettle back down and picked the teacups up. Light's sister's phone was in her pocket, blasting energetic pop into her ears full-volume.

"Yeah," Light said as she sat down at the table, putting one of the teacups down by his computer. She sat down on his other side, took a sip from her own cup and looked over his shoulder. He was looking at a brightly-colored website, a list of black words matching down the screen.

"From what I've seen so far, most of what anomalies matches what comes out of fiction. It might be fictional, but it's pretty useful. It's actually what gave me the idea to use music to try and block out other people's thoughts until we can get that under control."

"Ah."

"Of course, it's not always right. I've been learning through trial and error."

Naomi raised an eyebrow. "You have other anomalies to experiment with?" Light chuckled and rubbed the back of his hand, turning in his seat to look at her.

"Well, not exactly. I've been going off what I've been able to find on the internet and the news." He was also getting information from police reports, but Naomi-san didn't need to know that, know did she?

Naomi tsked. "Those aren't very reliable sources of information." Light shrugged.

"I know. He looked back to the computer screen and selected one of the links. "But it's all I have."

Naomi looked over Light shoulder, leading the article's title out loud. "Intangibility." Her eyes went wide with a sort of muted confusion.

"I thought we'd be looking into the DJ."

Light shrugged again. "Yeah, but we're still not sure what she can do yet. We'll explore her after this, but for now we should stick with what we know."

Light scrolled down the page slowly, Naomi reading over his shoulder.

"Stop," She said suddenly. Light's hand stilled on the touch pad and Naomi pointed at a section marked 'Capabilities'.

"Water walking," She read, "Air walking, flight... do you think Shinigami-san can do that?"

Light shook his head. "I doubt it. If my theory is correct, Shinigami Rem-san is able to make only her body or parts of her body completely intangible, as in she passes through nearly everything. Therefore, all of those should be impossible."

"Okay."

* * *

"...Hey, B? B? B? B?"

B sighed fondly. "Yes, A?" She was sitting on the couch upside down, hair pooling on the floor and legs kicking at the air.

"What do ya think happened to Shoko Maki-san? It wasn't me, and it couldn't be you."

"Well," B was lying on his back on the floor, idly flipping through an Agatha Christie novel held above his face. "It didn't happen to anyone else, so I don't think it was Ryuk. He would've done it to everybody just for laughs, and I don't think it was Rem either. She just seemed bothered with the whole thing. And you were doing your thing with everyone else, so that leaves us with Shoko Maki-san herself."

"Oh." A stopped kicking her legs. Her jeans had a hole in one of the knees, and the shoulders of her jacket were still speckled with dark spots from walking here in the rain. "So she's a Freak then?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Cool. Whatddya think she can do?" A turned her body, flipping herself over so she was lying face-up on the couch, legs once again kicking, this time at one of the armrests.

B shrugged and set his novel aside. "Who knows?"

"She does," A pointed out gleefully as he pushed himself to his feet. "She was one of the ones that were just staring at us, so I think her abilities are probably more mental than physical."

"It's freaky how you can do that, y'know." B had crossed to the kitchen and was currently standing in front of the open refrigerator, head flipped on its side the way he did sometimes. "Jam?"

"Oooh, ooh!" A nearly fell off the couch. "Oreos! Do we have Oreos? And whatddya mean, freaky? What is?"

B dropped down into a crouch, examining the contents of the fridge. "How you can tell what all your victims are focusing on, even when _you're_ focusing on something. It's awesome." After a careful bit of consideration, he pulled out a jar of jam with a picture of strawberries on the side. He set it on the counter next to the fridge and crossed the room, opening up a cabinet. "And why do you think her powers are mental based?"

"She's used to it," A exclaimed gleefully, tapping one of her temples with a forefinger. She flipped herself back upside down. "Her brain's used to _her_ mental capabilities, so _my_ mental capabilities weren't quite as strong. That's why she just stared instead of dancing or making out with the first guy she saw or something. It's just a theory of course, but still." B sat down on the floor across from her, handing her a package of Oreos.

"And thank you, I am very awesome." She gave a decisive nod and banged her head against the sofa base.

"Ow."

* * *

"Okay, limitations. Number one- May be limited to a certain range to work, touch only included."

"No."

The digital clock at the bottom of the computer screen said that it was five forty in the morning.

"Okay, number two- may be limited to a certain amount of targets at one time. How many people were there?"

"A lot," Naomi said shortly. Useful as it was on some counts, the Superpowers wiki was, in general (and pardon her language), full of shit.

In short, they were getting nowhere. It almost definitely wasn't mind control, and not a variation of it either.

"Number three-"

Naomi sighed and looked down into her empty teacup. "Yagami-kun, we've been over this page three times. It isn't mind control, it's not mental manipulation, and it isn't any of the listed associations. We were wrong. It isn't a big deal, I'll just go back next weekend and keep an eye on the DJ and the Rem-san-"

 _"I'm. Not. Wrong."_ Light's eyes were sharp and angry. It wasn't a look she had seen on him before, and it didn't suit him very well. It actually looked terrifying on him, and Naomi felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end. She didn't say anything, and Light's eyes were still made of fire and acid when he looked back at his laptop screen.

"There has to be something we missed. Mind control is the only explanation I can think of."

Naomi nodded listlessly and looked down at her empty teacup.

"...I'm going to go get some more tea," She said, and picked it up. Light grunted noncommittally, and she took that as permission to take his cup too. She stood up and crossed the kitchen in two long strides, placing both cups on the counter. She reached up and opened up the cabinet she kept the tea in. Her eyes darted across the contents for a second before her hand latched around a large, circular container and she looked over her shoulder.

"I'm out of tea," She said. "Is hot chocolate okay?"

When Light spoke, his voice was civil, not the tight, angry tone she'd been expecting.

"That's fine, Misora-san. Thank you."

Back to last name basis, huh?

Naomi reached down, opened the container and shook some hot chocolate mix into each of the cups. She took the kettle when she was gone, turning the sink's handle with her free hand and sporting water into the kettle. Light was clicking through abilities behind her, the side of his face propped up on one hand. Blue light played off his face, and the kettle was only halfway full when he stood up, chair scraping against the floor loudly. It toppled backwards with a crash, and Naomi dropped the kettle.

"Naomi-san," Light called as water trickled out of the kettle and rushed down the drain. "I found it!"

* * *

Guesswork. This whole plan of theirs was based off a whole lot of guesswork and even more luck.

"Y'know, we could just wait for them to come back to the club next week."

"Yeah, but they might've figured it out by then."

"Psh. No one's ever figured it out before. Face it, A, no one's smarter than we are." B pitched forward and rapped his knuckles against the door. After a beat, Shoko Maki opened it. She blinked at them for a moment, and her skin paled, just a shade or two. Another face filled the space behind her, and Light pushed past her to face them.

"Hello Elizabeth-san, Ryuzaki-san." He smiled at them and the two of them smiled back. "What are you doing here?"

"Well..." B reached into his pocket and fished out a music player. "We found this by the bar where you were passed out, and you mentioned one, so we'd figure we'd drop it off." Something glinted in his eyes, and his lips were moving again before Light even had a chance to open his mouth.

"Y'know, Shoko-san, most people don't have their address written down on index cards in their purses."

Something was off.

"You really should've covered your tracks better."

Every cell in her body, every hair on her head, every instinct she had- they were all _screaming_. They had to get out of here.

"Naomi Misora. Escaped patient at Hamato Sanitarium. Diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and admitted a couple of months after That Day."

A shifted and nudged B with her hip. He pressed back comfortably and kept on talking. Couldn't he feel it? They had to get out of here!

B smiled menacingly. "You can read minds, can't you, Naomi Misora? That's what the music's for, to drown everyone's thoughts out." He smiled wider, and the expression threatened to split his face.

"We could use someone like you. You felt it, didn't you? In the kitchen, A was able to keep the thoughts out of your head." Light's eyes flashed at the confirmation. "She can do that for you for hours at a time. You could live in bliss."

She could do no such thing, not without knocking both of them unconscious. But Naomi didn't need to know that- a mind reader could be incredibly useful, and they needed to know what Light could do.

Naomi could tell them that.

B expected this to go right, and he knew exactly how.

A expected this to go wrong, and she didn't know how.

Neither of them expected Naomi to open her mouth and say, "No she can't."

* * *

 _"Attention manipulation," Light said, leaning over his laptop. Naomi was reading over his shoulder, and she shook her head._

 _"Light-kun, this doesn't sound anything like what she was doing. Only some of us were focusing on her."_

 _"No, what Elizabeth-san can do isn't what's described here- I believe it's a variation of it. Instead of merely pulling people's attention towards or away from her, she can direct it towards or away from anything, or anyone. You experienced the kiss she was experiencing because she was so focused on it, her control slipped, and her concentration was so intense a few people experienced what she was, you included._

 _"And the periods where I couldn't hear their thoughts?"_

 _"She was focusing on you. Everyone was focused on you, including yourself. Since you were focusing so intently on you thoughts, you just ignored theirs. It's quite clever, actually." Light closed the tab._

 _"Say, Naomi-san. You mentioned that your downstairs neighbors were loud, correct? Mentally and physically?"_

 _"Yeah. Sometimes I have to pop the headphones back in."_

 _"Naomi-san, we've been able to clear you mind enough that you can walk around without the music, so the voices of your downstairs neighbors would be somewhat memorable, right? And you said that you recognized the DJ and her assistant from somewhere, right?"_

 _"Light-kun," Naomi rolled on the balls of her feet. "Are you saying that Elizabeth and Ryuzaki live in the apartment under me?"_

 _"If those are their real names. But yes, the two of them do. And we, Naomi-san, are going to try an experiment."_

* * *

The phone sitting in her pocket was turned off. Nothing was running through the wires connected to her ears, and the thoughts of the tenants around them were a dull, aching buzz. It wasn't hard to clear her brain the way she had for the past couple of weeks, even if the noise was louder in the hall. She just stood there, taking deep breaths and forcing herself to hear only four sets of thoughts.

The DJ's.

The DJ's assistant's.

Light's.

And her own.

"Y'know, Shoko-san, most people don't have their address written down on index cards in their purses."

 _-something's wrong-_

"You should've covered your tracks better."

 _-holy crap, this isn't right, mind readers can't do this, is it the boy-_

"Naomi Misora. Escaped patient at Hamato Sanitarium. Diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and admitted a couple of months after That Day."

'That day'. So that's what they called it.

The girl was shifting nervously now, and Naomi watched her deliberately brush her hip against the boy's. She knew something was wrong.

The boy pressed up against her comfortingly, and for a split second, their thoughts mixed together.

 _-We need to get out of here-Why is she so jumpy-this is wrong, B-_ B. Either the boy's name was B or they had spotted her trick and were using aliases in their heads.

She was putting her money on the former.

B smiled at them menacingly. "You can read minds, can't you, Naomi Misora? That's what the music's for, to drown everyone's thoughts out." He smiled wider, and the expression threatened to split his face.

"We could use someone like you. You felt it, didn't you? In the kitchen, A was able to keep the thoughts out of your head." A. What a strange name. "She can do that for you for hours at a time. You could live in bliss."

 _-no I can't-no she can't-wonder what the boy can do-it's working, it's working-kinda feel sorry for her-now then, what can you do-that would've driven me crazy-Light Yagami, what are you-_

"No," Naomi said, "She can't."

B blinked, and A went a couple shades paler. She had called their bluff.

 _-what-tried to tell you-okay, stall for time-leaving now would be a good idea-_

Light smirked, leaning against the door frame.

"Attention manipulation," He said loftily. B shifted in place and A swallowed nervously, the thick bulge of an addam's apple suddenly bobbing up and down on her neck.

 _-no one smarter than us, eh?-ah, fuck-_

"That's quite the impressive talent. You seem to have a handhold so far, even if you do slip up occasionally. You're both panicking right now, you're both scared- the way I see it, you need me more than we need you."

Light wasn't acting normally. Anger and arrogance were seeping into his voice, he was getting cocky.

 _"I'm. Not. Wrong."_

...He wasn't still angry over that, was he? She had closed her range earlier, shoving Light's voice to the back with the thoughts of the tenants.

She cast that net again.

It was not a pleasant experience.

* * *

Light leered at them, suddenly so very, very tall. She was only sixteen, and short for her age. B was a year behind her, and he tended to cut his bodies down so she didn't feel quite so short. He was sweet like that. Yagami Light, on the other hand, had at least a year on her, and around two on B.

And he was very, very tall.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end, and sweat beaded on her temple, tiny little pricks staggering down her face.

 _This was a mistake._

Her breathing was suddenly so painfully, painfully loud.

 _We never should have come here._

B shivered next to her, and she clutched his hand out of instinct. A drop of sweat ran down the side of her face, rolling around on of her eyes like a tear cried out of her forehead.

 _I'm scared... I'm so scared._

Yagami's pupils flashed red for a brief, brief moment. It made her gut twist, and instinct told her to look away, to run.

She didn't listen to instinct.

All she could focus on were his eyes, and suddenly, his words made so much more sense...

"You're just kids," He said. It felt like she had cotton stuffed in her ears, and yet his voice was just _so damn clear_. She would've thought he was speaking in her head if she hadn't seen his lips moving. "I can offer you protection." He cocked his head to one side and smiled at them. That smile was all she could focus on at the moment, and she felt control slip from her fingers. Naomi glanced at that smile. B stared at it with even greater intensity. A man passing behind them paused and looked at that smile, caught in her thrall like a fly in honey.

Protection sounded... nice.

(Some back corner of her mind was screaming.) Her first thought was attention control, but this wasn't anything like the thrall she had only felt once or twice. (Hypnotism, that little corner of her head cried. He's hypnotizing you.)

She clutched B's hand and watched him open his mouth to say yes.

He probably would've if Naomi hadn't collapsed next to Light, screaming and covering from her ears. A phone spilled out of her pocket, screen dark and blank and taunting.

She had been reading their minds the whole time.

Light spun on his heel, face a mask of panic. "Naomi-san!"

B was the one standing in front of him, and he took the opportunity to kick the older boy in the crotch.

* * *

"Naomi-san!"

Light spun on his heel as she crumpled next to him, crashing to her knees with tears streaming down her face.

"...Loud," She gasped out. "...Too... fucking loud..."

A sharp pain made itself known in... certain places... and he crashed to his knees. Colors flashed by him in the form of figures shaped vaguely like people and he watched the DJ and her assistant run down the hallway. He didn't know what he had been thinking- he wouldn't have been able to keep them hypnotized forever, and that was how long he would've needed to keep control over them for his plan to work. Fine. Let them pass up salvation.

He reached out and grabbed Sayu's phone, his finger ghosting over the on button. The screen flickered to life and he waited for the device to turn on all the way before he pressed an icon, and then he was flipping through play lists and song titles.

Sayu listened to pop more than anything, and it took him a minute to find a rock song. When he did, he set it on loop and shoved the ear buds into Naomi's ears. She let out a gasp and clutched the earbuds to keep them from falling out. Her breathing was heavy and she let her shoulders droop as she caught her breathe. He stood up and looked down the hall. It was futile, he knew- the brats were probably out of the building already.

"Thank... you."

He nodded stiffly. "Do you know their names?"

Naomi nodded and stood up, long hair rustling against black leather.

"A. The girl's name is A and the she calls the boy B."

Light frowned. A and B... strange names.

"Okay. They've probably fled the building. Our best bet would be to search their room-" A hand landed on his wrist, heavy and forceful. Muscle memory was something you never really forget, and he had the feeling Naomi could break that delicate joint of his with a twist of her own.

"Light-kun," She said sharply, "We're going after them."

* * *

They had split after they left the apartment, pounding away on different sides of the pavement with an agreement to meet at the airport serving as their only goodbye. That was three minutes ago and she was standing on top of a dumpster now, her gaze fixed on the apartment building's doors.

Doors no one had come out of yet.

Out of the flow of people that had come past her- a tall, broad-shouldered man, a little brown-haired girl in a skirt, a angry looking blonde teenager with her hair in pigtails- none of them were tall woman with dark eyes and dark hair, and none of them were teenagers with a white shirt and eyes made of fire.

They weren't being followed, and she had no idea where B was.

Hence, standing on a dumpster. Being noticeable in the first place helped, and she was pretty sure most people didn't go around standing on top of dumpsters, yelling about the second letter of the English alphabet at the top of their lungs. People were staring, freezing where they stood and looking at her like she's insane.

Perfect.

B's name died in her throat and she spread her arms out, spacing her fingers out like so many branches on a tree. She didn't tug on their attention, she _pulled_ , and they bent to her will. She felt like a puppeteer, a master of false, wooden life. Their attention, their will wrapped around her fingers like marionette strings, and she smiled.

Then she turned their attention into her attention and focused it all on B.

 _Find him._ That was her command, and heads started to swivel. She hasn't had this many people in her thrall before, and she felt her brow crease and her eyebrows furrow. Her nose stung, sharp little pains biting and snapping at her. Blood trickled down her face, and all she could do is remember the last time she had a nosebleed- dancing in a police station with B, handcuffs locked around her wrists. She had passed out then, and it wasn't any different this time.

She fell the way anime characters did, toppling backwards with her limbs flapping around her. She hadn't tied her hair back in a ponytail this morning and it rushed around her face as she fell, flying in a cloud of something that looked like straw. A image of B flashed across her mind as she landed, hitting against something that _felt_ like pillows but was really a pair of arms.

She'd never wanted anything so bad before that people still stayed in her thrall when she was out of commission.

* * *

So... that was a monster.

Now, before anyone gets angry about this- Light's reaction to A and B. From what we've seen in canon, Light reacts... badly... to being one-upped. (Cough cough Lind L. Tailor, Cough cough L finding him, cough cough do I even have to mention the warehouse thing?)

So- tell me what you think! That little review button is lonely! And whatever you do, _don't break the world and rise the dead, people!_


	4. Radium Girl

Okay, people, what did I _specifically tell you not to do_?  
Raise the dead.  
And what did you do?  
 _Raise the dead._ Napoleon came to life in my backyard.

 _Napoleon_ _._ We're facing a national crisis people. This is what happens when you don't review. Now, enjoy the story while I go kill Napoleon and his... army of samurai... okaaaay.

(I don't own Death Note.)

* * *

Radium Girl

When Light and Naomi burst out the doors of her apartment building, the world had fallen to shambles. The chaos reached five or six blocks in each direction, loud and angry. People were either running around like chickens with their heads cut off or standing in place, perfectly still save for the frantic turnings of their heads.

There was also a truck speeding towards them, the driver turning in his seat to get a better look out the window. Out of the corner of his eye, Light saw A falling, toppling backwards and out of sight. She had been standing on a dumpster, her arms spread out like a demented puppeteer. He sucked in a breath and waited for the truck to stop moving, for the world to go back to normal.

It didn't.

A was probably passed out on the trash-strewn floor of an alleyway, and the people around them where still looking for something for her- probably B. They must've split up after they left the hotel... but then why would A have such a blown-out reaction? It didn't make sense...

"Pardon me." The voice was stiff and formal and came from behind him, sounding off right in his ear. He nearly jumped and turned around, bumping his shoulder into Naomi's on accident. She spun around too, her hair flying though the air and slamming to a stop against her back. There was... someone standing behind them, hunched over in a black hoodie. The voice gave the speaker away as male, deep and rough. It didn't sound like it could be produced by the human voice box. His eyes were shaded by a combination of the hoodie and a few wispy black bangs, and his posture was so bad he was quite nearly bent in half. What little of the man's face he could see was glossy and pale, the light shining off it, A mask, Light realized. The man was wearing a mask. This wasn't a chance encounter then.

"What is going on?"

Either A's grip on their attention was slipping now that she was unconscious, or the man was somehow impervious to A's fit.

If their surrounding were anything to go off of, Light was betting on the latter.

There was a twisting shriek of metal and they spun just in time to see the truck crash over the edge of the sidewalk, crushing a mailbox as it skidded towards them. The driver was still leaning out his window, blissfully unaware to the chaos around him. People screamed and scattered behind him, and a small crowd trickle dolt the doors of an office building behind them. Naomi reached out and grabbed the stranger by the wrist.

"We need to leave," She said grimly, years upon year of FBI expertise leaking into her words as the truck loomed over them. " _Now."_

The stranger pulled his wrist away with a ridiculous amount of ease. "There are still people in the buildings. If I am correct, you quite literally have the power to save them, no?"

"No time!" The truck was nearly on them now, and Naomi had to shout to be heard over the sound of sparking, screeching metal. Neither of them made any mention of the fact that the man seemed to realize what they were. Again, she reached out and grabbed the man's wrist, and again, he pulled away.

The man in the hoodie pushed past them, shrugging them out of his way.

The truck slid towards them on its side, having flipped over when it had crushed the mailbox.

The man in the black hoodie reached out.

 _And the man in the black hoodie caught it._

* * *

A was sitting in a chair when she woke up.

She could hear sounds, soft beeping and booping. The seat was hard plastic beneath her, and warm from body heat. She cracked an eye open, the other following a beat later. She was... somewhere mostly dark, and peppered with glowing lights. It took a moment for her vision to focus itself, blurry shapes and swaths of color rearranging themselves into objects, into people.

...An arcade.

Ah, well. She's woken up in stranger places.

She sat up a bit straighter and stretched, arms rising up above her head and joints popping. She settled back into her chair and arched her back in another stretch. There was a bottle of water sitting on the table in front of her and she reached for it, undoing the screw top and sucking down a couple of gulps without a second thought.

Now then, the million dollar question- why was she here again?

She set the bottle back down on the table. Something had happened... she had been scared, and she had lost something, something important...

Oh. Right.

The terrifying pair of Freaks they had (foolishly) confronted. The woman collapsing. Pitching forward to kick the boy in the crotch. Rushing down the stairs, taking the steps four at a time. Bursting out into society and splitting. B throwing a rushed agreement to meet at the airport over his shoulder. Watching the doors for three straight minutes, anger as she realized they'd split for nothing. Standing on the dumpster, high on power and fear and sudden obsession. Blood streaming down, across her lips, dripping off her chin and pooling in her collarbone. Falling backwards as the world turned dark around her.

And landing on a nest of pillows.

She shook her head at the rush of memories faded and blurry with light, like a flashback in a television show. She took another swallow of water. Really, it was strange that she wasn't more... freaked out about this. But the water was just _so_ cool, and the trace amounts of blood on her face just felt _right_ , and this seat was just so _soft_ underneath her... wait. Plastic wasn't soft. That seat had been hard when she had woken up, she was sure of it.

She set the water down and stood up fast, fast enough to send the chair crashing to the floor. No one so much as looked in her direction. She backed away from the table and ran over a list of drugs she knew of, desperate to find the one that could bend the sense of touch like that in large amounts, so suddenly and without explanation.

(Perhaps that list shouldn't have been as long as it was.)

She came up empty.

* * *

"Light-kun, aren't we going after the anomaly in the black hoodie?"

Light fiddled with the doorknob some more. "Naomi-san, we have no idea where he went. He just disappeared after he stopped that truck. Currently, we have no leads."

She threw her arms up in the air. "Yes, but someone must have caught him on camera! Super strength- that's not exactly subtle, Light-kun!"

Light's lips turned up into a smile. It wasn't a very nice one. "Exactly. He'll probably show up online, or maybe even in the news. And we'll get our clues then. For now, we need to focus on A and B."

She watched his smile turn into a scowl, and he angrily thrust the bobby pin into the keyhole again. They were in the hallway of her apartment building, the world suitably calming down around them. The plan was to wait and see what the six-o'clock news had to say about A's little outburst- and, apparently, the man in the black hoodie. The man who had saved... who knows how many lives. There had been a lot of people in the buildings behind them, that's all she knew about the numbers.

She made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle and stepped forward to place a gentle hand on Light's shoulder.

"Let me take care of it, Light-kun."

She had expected him to shrug off her help and resume his attempts to pick the lock. She did not expect him to drop his hands away from the lock and step away, the bobby pin still wedged in the keyhole.

* * *

Step to the left.

Step the right.

Jump. Spin. Clap your hands.

Raise your arms in the air. Put your hands on t the sides of your head. Flap them.

Start hopping from foot to foot. Don't stop.

...Mello would be laughing his ass off if he could see this.

Primarily because he was currently playing Dance Dance Resolution and the song was... 'Carmeldancing', or something like that.

And also because he was smiling like a gigantic dork.

He went up on the heel of his boot and twisted, throwing all of his weight to the side. Colored squares flashed under his feet and lights played off his goggle lenses. Out of the corner he saw the girl he had found standing on top of a dumpster sit up. Her upper body had been slumped over her arms and the table, and she moved into a different position with a rustling of brushing skin and loose hair and baggy clothing. She raised her arms and stretched as his foot glanced across a couple of color-switching squares, and with loose, sloppy wave of his hand over his shoulder, he tore his vision away from her to focus on his game.

It would've been a pretty good day, really, if a minute or so later, there hadn't been the sound of a chair crashing to the floor.

A particularly loud sound, as it was.

Matt stopped, feet lying flat across the raised floor. He sighed, blew a gust of air out around his cigarette. The declaration of his loss flashed across the game screen, which really was a shame, his winning streak had been _so long_...

He turned on the spot to catch sight of the girl. She was standing up now, a good number of paces from the table and with the chair upturned on its side. No one else had turned to look at her.

"...So you're like that, are you?"

The girl had been frozen in thought and she visibly startled, shoulders pitching forward a bit as she turned to face him. Her eyes were a dark brown, a little too dull to be considered chocolate. More of a grayish sort of brown, really. They were also wide, like a deer caught in the headlights. (Cliché, he knew, but hey, it fit!)

He smiled and stepped off the game platform.

He raised one hand in a lazy, unmoving wave and said, quite simply; "Hi."

* * *

She had to kick the door down, eventually. Wood splintered under her foot, the door fell inward and Light stared at her with an unbridled amount of an emotion she couldn't name.

...It was a weak door, and that still hurt more than it probably should've, but at least it looked _epic._

A small plume of plaster dust wafted down from the doorframe and she didn't wait for it to clear, stepping right through it.

(Light followed after her, but only after the doorframe wasn't raining plaster.)

A and B's apartment was dark, and Light reached out and threw the light switch with a small click. Light bulbs flickered to life instantaneously, casting the room into soft light.

It looked normal.

They were standing in a small living room area, facing a coffee table made of glass and black wood. A couch was parallel to it, small and upholstered with a soft-looking light brown fabric. That room led into an only slightly larger kitchen, lined with wooden cupboards and with a strip of a counter down the center, and another that wrapped around the room under the cupboards. It also lead into a small hall, host to two doors- probably a bedroom and a bathroom.

Naomi was the one to move first, taking a step across the green shag that lined the floor of the first room. She walked across the room and into the kitchen, her shoes sounding off loudly against white and green tiles. The seam where the two rooms met only had half a wall in place of a full one, leaving a nice, large space in place of a door. The section of wall had a window splitting it nearly halfway through to, and when Naomi looked out of it, she could see Light making a meager attempt to prop the door up in its frame. She turned away and made her way towards one of the many cupboards. The counter was cluttered with napkins and what looked to be jam jars, some empty and some not. There was a shiny refrigerator with a small trash can sitting next to it, the squat, plastic kind you could get at a corner store for a buck or two. The crumpled remains of a blue package of Oreos stuck out the top, the light reflecting off it like a beacon.

The cupboards were... strange. Exactly half of them seemed normal- chips, packets of crackers or cookies, a few bottled waters, etc. The other half was mostly normal too, save for the unnaturally high amount of jam and the one cabinet entirely devoted to just that. The only thing interesting in the fridge was, once again, the jars of jam scattered among everything else, and the counter tops didn't hold anything remotely interesting, and neither did the handful of drawers attached to the counters.

She found something in the trash can though.

An empty pill bottle.

It was lying at the bottom of the trash can, hidden beneath thick layers of napkins and food wrappers. She reached in, fished it out and held it up to the light. The label was torn, and she couldn't tell what the pills were or who they had been prescribed to. She frowned and set it aside from the rest of the trash she had pulled out, sitting beside her in a pile. She grabbed a fistful of paper and plastic, re-stuffing the trash can with its contents. She stood up when she was done and shut the still open fridge door. Soft footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned to face them, arms raising up in the starts of a defensive position. She's still jumpy from the hell A raised.

Light was standing there, and she sighed and let her arms drop back down to her sides. He was holding his own pill bottle, this one half full and with an intact label.

"Naomi-san, I believe we have something."

* * *

"Who are you?"

It was voiced as a question, and it was phrased like a question, but they both knew it wasn't a question. Matt smiled at her easily, and the girl glared back.

"Y'know," he walked towards the table, and she had to turn to keep him in her sight. "That was a pretty neat trick you pulled earlier. Mind control?"

She just stared straight ahead and repeated her question that was a command.

"Who are you?"  
He stopped at the table and reached for the abandoned water bottle.

"You can call me Matt. Don't worry, it's an alias."

He threw his head back and took a swig of water.

* * *

He was sitting in an internet café, staring out the window. There was a small styrofoam cup of coffee laying on the table in front of him, next to a plate of jam tarts and a stack of empty, dirty plates. This place was just a few blocks away from some university, so he supposed if worse came to worse, he could make a break for it and hide there.

There were soft footsteps on the tiled floor of the café, and they stopped next to his table.

"Pardon me." The voice was flat and eloquent, and B looked up.

Never had he heard a monotone that managed to sound soft, of all things.

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

There was a strange person standing next to his table- young, with big, big eyes and messy hair. His skin was pale, pale enough that he wondered if the man went outside on a regular basis.

"Oh, no problem."

"Thank you." The man dipped his head as a form of acknowledgment and slipped into the booth, taking the seat opposite from him. He pulled his legs up to his chest, and B watched him shift his position so that he was crouching in his seat, balancing on the balls of his feet with his arms across the tops of his knees- kind of like a frog.

The man ordered a cup of tea with cream and sugar, and B turned in his seat and kept looking out the window. People watching was a habit of his, if he were to be honest. Living on the streets of cities like LA and Manhattan had taught him that turning your back on anyone was a bad idea, whether they be some curly-haired kid or a girl in a red dress.

It was a noise that made him look away from the window five minutes later, a loud, repetitive clicking. Frog-man was tearing sugar packets over and dumping the contents into his tea, stirring them in with a spoon. B watched him do that for the next two minutes, and when he was done the tea looked more like a thick sort of syrup than actual, y'know, tea.

"...That's a lot of sugar," He said eventually. The man didn't look up.

"You had a lot of jam." He gestured towards the stack of dirty plates.

"In fact, those are probably more unhealthy than this." Somehow, he managed to take a sip of the sugar-tea-syrup-thing.

"That's a blatant lie."

"Correct."

The next two minutes were spent in awkward silence as B fidgeted with one of his pant legs and Frog man continued with his tea.

"What's your name?" He asked eventually, and took a sip of his coffee. He couldn't just keep calling him 'frog man' in his head, now could he?

The man's next words nearly made him choke on his coffee.

"Ryuzaki," He said simply. "Ryuzaki Rue."

...Frog man it was.

* * *

Lithium's a prescriptive drug used to either treat the maniac episodes of bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder.

It's also what was in the pill bottle Light had found. He was on his laptop right now, sitting at her kitchen table and tapping away. They had found a handful of other pill bottles, and no prescription. Light was researching the lot of them, trying to find out what they treated.

Naomi, on the other hand, was doing the dishes.

She was elbow deep in hot water and soap suds, scrubbing at a coffee mug from earlier with a purple sponge. Water swished around her forearms as she stared at the sink. The mug had been scrubbed clean a good three minutes ago, and she was still distractedly rubbing away at it with the sponge.

One could probably hear the gears in her head turning. that man, the one in the black hoodie... he was familiar.

Her memory must be getting worse, she decided, if she couldn't remember seeing someone like that- honestly, how did posture _get_ that bad?

She blinked once and fished the mug out of the water. It dripped, little droplets of lukewarm water dribbling down curved white sides and falling away, disappearing into the sink. She twisted one of the sink knobs and passed the mug under a stream of old water. She turned the water off and set the mug in the drying rack. A quick, high-pitched song was whistling in her ear.

The phone Light had given her had been on when they had met the stranger. Perhaps his voice had mixed with the song, and that was what she recognized.

She crossed that idea out the second it crossed her mind. At first, sounds had been on the edge of her perception. Recently though, they had been splitting away from the voices and the music, sounding clearly. It was like hearing people's thoughts through her mind's eye, except she had an ear up there too.

She plunged her hands into the watery depths of the sink again, pale hands disappearing under a field of soap suds. And then she froze suddenly, the recently recaptured sponge slipping from her grasp. The man had nearly been bent in half, folded over like a piece of origami paper...

She turned away from the sink, pulling her hands out of the water as she went. They dripped little puddles of water on the floor and she hurriedly wiped then on her jeans, leaving wet stains on her thighs.

"Light-kun, did you see his face?"

Her...(friend? Benefactor? Partner?) ally jumped in his seat. He twisted his upper body around to look at her, eyes caught somewhere between annoyed and intrigued.

"See whose face, Naomi-san?"

"The man in the black hoodie." Here, Light's shoulders slumped and annoyance danced across his face, plain and simple.

"He was wearing a mask, Naomi-san." He spoke slowly and stressed the syllables, like he was talking to a slow child rather than a fully grown adult. Rather than the disappointed expression he had expected, Naomi's face lifted into a smile. Had he... yes. She hadn't realized it at the time, but the man... yes, she was certain.

"He wasn't wearing a mask when he came to visit me," She said softly. "And he was bent in half. I could see his eyes through the mask holes..." She recognized his eyes

The legs of the wooden chair Light had claimed scraped against her kitchen floor as he pushed away from the table and stood up. He crossed the space between them in two long, awed steps.

"Are you sure, Naomi-san? Are you sure it was him?" He had close to no idea what she was talking about, but he was pretty sure he understood the basic meaning.

"They were dead," She said softly. "Big and dead and black." Her head had drifted down sometime during her revelation, her eyes fixed on her shoes. She lifted it now, and her eyes only held confidence.

"Yes, Light-kun. I am."

Naomi Misora had seen the face of the anomaly in the black hoodie.

* * *

"Why'd you pick me up?"

An easy smile. "I'm chivalrous."

A was sitting across from the boy now- Matt, he had told her to call him- at the table, the bottle of water between them. She was tapping one of her feet against the hard floor of the arcade, her knee energetically bouncing along. Matt was following the motion with his eyes, the barest outlines of his pupils darting along under his goggles.

He was a strange picture, to be honest- worn jeans with patches and holes, red-and-black striped shirt, soft, furry vest, shiny black boots, and the noticeable goggles, covering eyes. He had bright hair, a shade of red that was comparable to a fire truck. She could see the barest hints of mousy brown roots in the thick, tangled mop of hair, and she couldn't help but wonder if he was running too.

"The thing with the pillows. And my seat. What'd you do?"

Confusion twisted his face for a minute or two. His nose scrunched up, his mouth twisted to the side, his eyebrows knit together. He'd forgotten to dye those, and they were a sad, forlorn shade of brown.

"The thing with the pillows... oh you, mean the alleyway! When you fainted on the dumpster!"

She flinched. "You don't have to say it so loudly, y'know." She cast a reflective, subconscious glance around her, warily eyeing the other arcade patrons. Apparently, it wasn't as well hidden as she thought, because he followed her peripheral glance. A smile broke out across his face when he realized the object of her uneasiness, and the bridled, miniscule smugness there made A feel very, very small.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about them." He took another puff on his cigarette, and not for the first time, she wondered how he had gotten that in here.

"What did you do to them?" She was by no means a hero- taking up with B had insured that. But still, if he could do that to twenty-something nerds, what was to say he couldn't do it to her too?

 _Nothing._

The boy sighed, shoulder slumping. "So you're one of those self-righteous hero-types, huh? What a shame..."

A blinked. "Huh?"

The boy lifted his head and smiled at her widely. "It's just I already live with two of those, and I'm not quite sure I could survive with three of you."

A blinked again. Maybe the kid wasn't on the lam, if he was living with other people... of course, if his context was anything to go off of, they were Freaks too, so the lot of them could easily be runaways.

"...Actually, I was just curious. I'm about the farthest thing you can get from a hero..." She made her own, shaky attempt at a smile. This whole situation made her uneasy.

"Monster," The boy said softly.

"Huh?"

"Monster. That's the farthest thing you can get from a hero." He reached up and pushed his goggles back, so that they were resting on his head. He had green eyes, overly bright from contacts. "I think you overestimated the distance between you and a hero."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." He took another puff of his cigarette, expelling a small cloud of smoke. It broke apart almost instantaneously, trailing off in wispy, delicate tendrils. Across from him, A fidgeted in her seat.

"How'd you get that in here? The cigarette, I mean?"

Matt had a crooked smile, and a lopsided grin. He flashed the latter and rattled off a quiet little laugh. He pulled the cigarette away from his lips with a final cloud of smoke and tapped it out of the table's edge. A little piece of ash broke away and fell to his lap, force of impact smashing the tightly packed clump and scattering little bits of gray ash across his pant legs. He placed the cigarette on the table and left it there, in front of the water bottle.

"Sensations," He said cryptically, and at her confused expression, he added, "Let me show you." He leaned forward and A reflectively pulled away as his finger brushed her wrist.

And just like that, there were dozens of ants crawling up her arm.

She shouted and pushed out of her chair, swiping at her arm and looking down.

...This would be a lot less embarrassing if there had actually been ants there. As it was, her arm was perfectly insect-free, smooth, pale flesh greeting her eyes.

She could still feel the colony of little devils marching up her arm, and Matt's laugh died in his throat. She was wide-eyed in horror, and he reached forward to grasp her wrist. Any feeling of the ants disappeared, and the girl let out a sigh of abject relief.

"Sensations," Matt said again.

* * *

"How do you know that name?"

The man had the nerve to smile at him. It wasn't much of a smile, actually, just a twitch at the corner of his lips, a faint uprising.

"I picked it out of a comic book. By the way, do you have a phone?"

B's answered was short, clipped. "No."

"Ah. What a shame. You see, I have something to show you. Of course, I suppose you could just see it in the window of a TV store or something of the sort. They're probably playing it on those big screens outside, too."

"Why don't you just use your own phone? And what do you want to show me?" B picked one of the jam pastries up and popped it in his mouth.

"I hate it when phones go off while I'm speaking, so I don't carry one." He took another sip of his tea. "Oh, and by the way, does your friend have a history with breakdowns? Because she had one a few hours ago, give or take."

B's eyes went wide.

"It was a big one," Frog man continued. "Effected almost everyone in a six-block radius. Quite impressive. Several people died or were injured. Has this happened before? It would be a terrible thing if someone were to catch her on camera, no? She would probably be declared a mass murderer. Perhaps her body would be donated to science. What do you think, Ryuzaki Rue-san?"

B picked one of the empty plates up and slammed it into the man's face.

* * *

Light's phone had been off all morning, and it wasn't until Naomi disappeared into the bathroom that he thought to check it. Her theory, her revelation, what ever it was- it was heavy. Apparently, the man in the black hoodie- the Anomaly with super strength- had visited her in the hospital. And he hadn't been wearing a mask. They had a face.

He was smirking as he tapped in his phone's pass code, and he startled for a split second at the sheer amount of missed messages.

Ten missed calls.

An ungodly amount of missed texts.

He tapped the screen a few times and pulled up his inbox. Most of the texts were from his parents, some of them were from Yuki, and at least half of them were from a number he didn't recognize. He frowned and brought up Yuki's messages.

 _Yuki: Light? Light where are you?_

 _Yuki: Light, what's going on? Your parents just called._

 _Yuki: Should I tell them you're not really here?_

 _Yuki: Light, pick up the phone._

 _Yuki: If you don't contact me in an hour, I'm telling them._

Her last message had been sent half an hour ago. He scowled at the blatant lack of honorific in her texts and tapped out a short response.

 _Light: I'm fine. Remember, I'm there, with you. Don't text me again._

He tapped out and sent his mother and father a different response, this one longer and lacking the impersonal tone he had taken with Yuki. His mother sent him a response in less than a minute.

 _Kaa-san: Call me, Light._

Most of her texts were unspecific, demands to know where he is, why he won't pick up the phone, and he was tapping her contact in his address book seconds later. He didn't even hear the phone ringing on the other end. Yagami Sachiko picked the phone up the second his caller ID showed up on her screen, and then she was talking into his ear a mile a minute.

When Naomi slipped out of the bathroom, Light was on his phone, smiling and giving warm assurances to the person on the other end.

"I'm fine, Kaa-san, really. Yes, I'm right here with Yuki. Sure. I'll be home soon. You too, Kaa-san. Bye."

He tapped the End Call button and opened his inbox, selecting the long, long string of texts from the number he didn't recognize. Naomi plopped down on the couch next to him, looking over his shoulder. Light flicked past the most recent message, scrolling to the top of the string.

 _Unknown Number: Hello? This is Lights phone right?_

 _Unknown Number: Nii-san? This is Sayu. Im using a friends phone._

 _Unknown Number: Nii-san something wierds happening outside. Im scared._

 _Unknown Number: Nii-san where are you? Please pick up the phone._

 _Unknown Number: Nii-san are you ok?_

Next to him, Naomi wrinkled her nose and shook her head.

"Your sister has horrible grammar."

Light shrugged and tapped off a response. "Yeah."

 _Light: Sayu? Are you okay? Where are you? What's going on? Tell me where you are and I'll come and get you. I'm still at Yuki's place._

It took a second, but sure enough, a text popped up in response. If there had been any doubt that the person he was texting wasn't Sayu, it disappeared with the burst of emojis he received in response, a quick address slapped on last minute. Naomi was still reading over his shoulder.

"That's not that far," She said. "I recognize the address. It's an internet café down a few blocks from here." Light nodded and slipped his phone into his jeans pocket.

"Okay. I'll call you tonight, Naomi-san."

* * *

"You can induce sensations?" A's eyes were wide, awed. "That's awesome. So that's how no one's noticed us, right? That's really cool. It explains a lot too."

Matt blinked at the sudden 360 in personality, and A felt a smirk spread across her features. Her knee was bouncing faster now, quick and erratic.

"So why'd you stick around to explain all this to me? Do you want me to join your little band of misfits?"

If the look that flashed across his face was anything to go by, she was right on the nail about her 'little group of Freaks' theory.

She didn't expect the smile-smirk that graced his face next.

"Should've known you'd be smart." He reached up and pulled his goggles back down, and she shifted uneasily in her seat.

"He only picks smart ones, y'know. And if he decided to go after your friend himself... well, you two certainly must be a pair of keepers."

Across from them, A gripped the table hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Her face had gone pale when Matt had mentioned B, and she swallowed nervously. This was almost as bad as this morning's confrontation.

"What do you mean? Who's with B? What the hell's going on?" Her fear had turned to anger at the drop of a hat, and Matt smiled, letting out a loose, breathy sort of quiet laugh. Mello would like her.

Or hate her with every inch of his being, but either way meant he cared.

"So, I guess you two are a package deal, right? If he wants to join, you'll come with him, and if you want to leave, he'll go with you. Where one goes, the other follows, and all that." He reached out for the water sitting at the center of the table. A leaned forward, pulling the plastic bottle away.

" _Heeeeey_." Math bit the inside of his cheek and stuck his lower lip out in a pout. "I was gonna drink that."

She ignored his little display. Her eyes had gone cold, and he watched her twist the little plastic cap into place. He changed his posture accordingly, sitting up straight and folding his hands before him. The girl sat the water bottle next the legs of her chair and turned in her seat to face him. She steeped her hands together in front of her, resting her chin on her fingertips.

"Quid quo pro. I ask a question, you answer honestly. You ask a question, I answer honestly."

Matt allowed himself one last smirk. "You know I'll know if you're lying, right?"

"Funny. I was going to say the same thing."

Matt made an amused sound in the back of his throat and let the smirk drop off his face.

"Okay. Ladies first."

She didn't hesitate, and he already knew what the question was before she had even opened her mouth. Well, he had a rough idea. He didn't get the exact wording, of course. He wasn't Near, after all.

Or L.

"Who's with B?"

Matt smiled and shook his head from side to side. Predictable.

"Our fearless leader, of course."

The girl's eyes flashed at his light tone. He changed his posture again, slipping into his preferred position- slumped in his seat with his arms folded on the table, his head resting on them.

"I want a name."

"Ah, ah, ah." Lazily, he raised one finger and waved it from side to side, like a parent disciplining a naughty child.

"One question. That was the deal, wasn't it?"

"That wasn't a question. It was a statement." The corner of her mouth turned up in a wry sort of line. "I thought this 'fearless leader' of yours only picked smart ones."

Matt smiled and chuckled into his hand, and A blew out a gust of air. He seemed to do that a lot- laughing, that was. Like B, but without the maniacal edge.

"I'll answer that question next time," He said calmly. "Promise. Now then... what's your name?"

She didn't skip a beat. "A." Matt raised an eyebrow.

"A isn't much of a name."

She flashed another wry smile. She was still bouncing her knee, and it was regularly slamming into the bottom of the tabletop. "That's why I wear it. Now then, I believe you have a question to answer."

He chuckled again, smiling into his palm. "Clever girl. However, I was given express orders not to reveal even an alias, so I'm afraid I can't help you there." He smirked up at her. A was flushed, her face slowly turning a rather angry-looking shade of pink. "If it helps, I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to. None of us know his name." Well, Near probably did, but Matt didn't know any specifics, so it was technically true.

"Let's see... what to ask a pretty girl such as yourself..."

A stood up and slammed her hands down on the table. "That wasn't an actual answer. I get another question."

"Now, now, A. That wasn't part of the rules, now was it? And the answer I gave was perfectly trueful, so it was well in bounds." A just glared at him for a moment. Then she bit the inside of her cheek and sagged, falling back into her seat, like a puppet with her strings cut.

"Oooh, ooh, I know!" For a split second, she would've sworn he was _leering_ at her. "You have pretty nice legs. Are you dating your friend- B, right? 'Cause if you aren't..." He wiggled his eyebrows up and down. Well, she thought he did at least. She couldn't quite tell with the goggles and all, but she was well-attuned to such signs.

She wasn't sure if her face was loosing it's redness or gaining more, and she just stared at him for a moment.

And then she stood up, leaned forward and slammed her fist into his face. His nose crumpled under the weight of the punch, and he went flying backwards. His chair toppled with him and the plastic made a loud, smashing sort of sound when it hit the floor. Matt sat up and blinked at A from where he was sprawled, blood streaming from his nose. She was sitting again, legs crossed and hands folded in her lap.

It took strength to deliver a haymaker like that, even if it didn't knock him out, and Matt smiled as he danced on the edge of consciousness. A was looking down her nose at him, back straight and eyes cold. She looked regal, he decided privately. Like a warrior queen. He chuckled and stood up shakily. He reached out and heaved his chair up, pulled it over to the table and sat down heavily, with a plop.

"That hurt," He said.

"I know."

And then Matt smiled at her brightly, like that little exchange hadn't just occurred. " You didn't answer, and you punched me too, so we'll just say yes for now and give me another question."

A's face was turning red again, and before she even had a chance to open her mouth, Matt brightly rattled off, "Do you have a superhero name?"

A felt she was justified in blinking. "...Do I have a ... what?"

Matt grinned. "A superhero name! A codename! Like Antman! Or Spiderman! Or Superman! Although..." He pointed at her chest. "Unless those are fake, you'll want to pick one that doesn't end in 'man'. And I happen to have the perfect name for you! Doesn't end in 'man' or anything!"

A was noticeably unmoved by this great, mildly passionate display. "No," She monotoned flatly, "I don't."

"Perfect! Puppeteer!"

"...What?"

Matt actually hopped up on his seat before her. He stretched his arms out and wiggled his finger like a magician preparing to reveal a lovely assistant whole rather than sawn in half. The trick was officially called Radium Girl, and with the great number of secrets and surprises she had been privy to in the past hour or so, A thought it fit.

"Puppeteer!" Matt cried grandiosely. "You looked like one when you were standing on that nasty dumpster, and earlier, and when you fell into your seat earlier you looked like a puppet with your strings cut, like when you fell into my arms-" "I didn't know they were there, or I would've fallen the other way." "-, so it fits all the way round! Puppeteer!"

He smiled at her once- it was a nice smile, not one of the wild, wicked ones he'd been flashing at her during the duration of their meeting. Then he jumped up, his boots leaving the plastic seat of his chair. He stayed suspended like that for less than a moment, and then he simply dropped out of the air. He landed in his seat sitting down, and she wondered how he had done that, one eyebrow raised.

He leaned forward in his chair and rested his chin on steepled fingers. He was still wearing that smile.

"Do ya like it?"

A smiled. "It's not your turn anymore," She said, and watched his face fall. "But yes."

* * *

Okay... I think that's the... the last of them... ugh. Never fight Napoleon and an army of samurai kids. Just don't. Also, I'm pretty sure I just single-handedly saved the world... okay, maybe a random bunch of superheroes that looked suspiciously like the Death Note characters came in and took care of them, but I did plenty too. Getting your arms cut off and then having to type this author's note with your tongue is not easy... anyways- review to avoid another situation like this! And to help me grow my arms back quicker!


	5. Dancing with the Dark

_Suprise! I'm not dead! And I have both arms! And there aren't any zombies! Someone reviewed, and revived this story!_

 _Now, as you've probably noticed if you've been watching, I've cut the weekly updates- this is a long story, with long chapters, and I've been pretty busy lately. I just don't have the time for that commitment anymore._

 _Now then, on to something less serious- replies to reviews! (Yes, I finally got one! I'm so happy!)_

 _Truewhovian77- Hey! First off- thank you. So. Much. Like I said, life's been busy, and I was starting to loose motivation for this story. Your review though, just made my day. I can't physically stress this enough- **THANK YOU**. Now then, onto the actual review- the resemblance to Heroes is a bit of both, actually. The name kept popping up quite a bit when I was researching powers and stuff for this story, so I decided to check it out. I've only seen a few episodes, but it's great. Besides, this writing style is awesome, and I am so very, very glad it had the intended effect on you. Now, A and B don't actually appear in the main series. They're characters of a spin off novel from Death Note. Well, B is. A is only ever mentioned- poor guy doesn't even have a gender, actually. And yes, there is so going to be rivalry for members between L and Light. They're both trying to change this new world, and they need people for that, don't they? Anyways, thanks for stopping the impending zombie apocalypse, and I hope this lives up to your expectations!_

 _Hey! Again! As you might've noticed, I forgot my line breaks, and it's pretty confusing without them, since the POV jumps around so much, so I fixed it. Special thanks to **Guest** and **Patjeeson** for helping me notice that. (And no, Light isn't the man at the end.)_

* * *

Dancing with the Dark

Matt showed up to the rendezvous an hour late, and he came with a bloody, flattened nose and a small blonde girl ghosting after him like a living shadow.

Mello was sitting in the car when they came, head propped up on an arm resting in the space of the rolled-down window. The radio was blaring loud, obnoxious, screaming into the mike-type music that could be heard from a mile away. He heard the soft, whispery ghosting of sneaker over concrete first, and the loud clunking of Matt's boots second. Strange, considering the order they came in.

He looked down to meet Matt's hidden eyes and his stupid, lopsided grin. He raised one hand in a lazy greeting, as if his nose wasn't caved in, dried blood still crusting around his upper lip and down one side of his chin. Mello's lips quirked up into a smirk, and he leaned halfway out the window.

"What'd you do this time? Tell her she has nice boobs again?"

Matt full-out smiled. "Legs, actually."

He laughed and shook his head. " I have no idea why he still thinks it's a good idea to send you out to meet with the girls."

Matt laughed this time, as he went around the truck's hood. He reached over and opened the door to the driver's seat for him, and Matt slipped in with a cheery, "Because he's an antisocial dork."

Actually, it was probably so they knew what to expect from Matt if they joined, and to test their resolve, but the other option was funnier.

There was a click behind them, and the girl slipped into the back row of seats. He could see her face in the rearview mirror, and he realized with a start that he had forgotten she'd been there. She started to bounce one of her knees, her right shoe tapping against the car floor. He must have been staring, because Matt flashed him a grin as he turned the key in the ignition.

"Mello, this is A. A, this is Mello. He's a freak."

A raised a hand, and Mello inclined his head.

"Hey."  
"Hey."

Matt slung one arm around the back of Mello's seat, looked out over his shoulder, and they started to back out of the large garage the car had been parked in.

"So," Mello said conversationally, "What can she do?"

They swung out into the street, the bright, cherry-red vehicle slipping into traffic smoothly. Matt reached for the radio.

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

Mello batted Matt's hand away. "No. We are not listening to your country crap."

"Aw, it isn't crap Mels, it's great music!"

"Great music, my ass."

"Language. There's a lady in the car."

Mello snorted. "If she spent a couple of hours with you and punched you in the nose, I think she can handle a little swearing." He draped one arm around his headrest and turned around in his seat. "Right?"

A was gone.

 _Shit._

"Hey. Matt. Matt." He was poking his friend in the shoulder over and over, quick and hard. "Pull over."

Matt didn't deign to look away from the road, and his cigarette bobbed in his mouth as he spoke. "Why?"

"A's gone. You didn't tell me you picked up a teleporter."

Matt laughed, nearly spitting out his cigarette. "Look in the rearview mirror, Mels."

When Matt laughs like that, it's never a good thing. Unfortunately, he's also almost always right, so it's with so reluctance that Mello followed Matt's suggestion. What he saw there made him blink, and look between the back row of seats and the mirror several times. A's reflection was in the mirror after all, and he was quite certain that she wasn't in the backseat. His confusion made Matt laugh again, and A glowered in the mirror.  
"Told you it wouldn't work."

"Damn."  
Mello blinked. "...Explanation. Now."

He turned and looked into the back seat, just in time to watch A reappear. She didn't shimmer into existence or anything like that- she was just... there. One second she wasn't there, the next she was. She smiled at him mockingly, and the expression was so like Near his stomach twisted.

"Attention control," Matt said, and the car turned a corner. "I had a theory that her reflection could still be seen and stuff when she directed attention away from herself, and she didn't know, so we decided to test it out." He smiled over his shoulder. "You owe me five bucks now."

"...What if I told you I don't actually have five bucks?"

Mello wasn't sure if he liked her or not.

* * *

The anomaly in the black hoodie did, in fact, show up on the Six O'clock news. A's tantrum was the main story, and he was all over it. Somehow, no one had seen A, and everyone had seen the man in the black hoodie. They were playing footage of him on the TV over and over- the man in black reaching out and catching the truck, stopping it in its tracks, the driver relatively safe. The news anchor was babbling on and on about the supposed existence of Anomalies- 'Metahumans', he called them, like in comic books.

Light took another bite of his rice. They were the kind of family that generally ate dinner at the kitchen table, not camped out on the couch like this. But his father had been called in to see what was going on and had arrived when things were calming down, Sayu had born witness to it, and his mother was just curious.

He shoveled another bite of rice into his mouth, his eyes drifting to the TV screen...

Wait. That couldn't be right. No. This was wrong. He had been so sure-

Something hard slammed into the side of his leg. He hadn't swallowed his rice yet, and he gagged on it. His eyes bugged out and he pitched forward over his plate. He had to bite down on his tongue to keep from choking, and his father looked away from the television and in his direction.

"Light?" His voice was warm, concerned. "Are you okay?"

"...Y-yeah," He managed to rasp out, straightening up in his seat. "I'm fine. I just swallowed some rice wrong." He smiled, eyes shut. He felt his father's gaze on him for a moment more, heavy with concern. It had always been hard to lie to his father, and he had to resist the nervous urge to swallow. It seemed like an eternity until he looked away, and when he did Light opened his eyes. He turned his head and glared at Sayu . She was sitting next to him on the couch, calmly shoveling miso and rice into her mouth. She turned her own head to face him, eyes devious.

"What's the matter, Light?" Her words were laced with concern, and no one noticed her mouth one, single word after it.

Which was disgusting, because she hadn't swallowed yet. He could've lived his life without knowing seeing that, thank you.

He turned his gaze back to his plate and took another bite of rice. He swallowed, and set his chopsticks on the edge of the plate. They were eating take out that night, and they had come with the food, wrapped in bright red paper.

"Excuse me," He said, picking his plate up, standing up and leaving his dinner on the couch cushions. His mother excused him with a tilt of her head and he padded off- up the stairs, down the hallway, and into the bathroom. He shut the door and crossed the room quickly. Sayu wasn't a genius, but she was smart nonetheless. He had maybe five minutes. He had purposefully started taking his time in the bathroom when he was around six, maybe seven. He took at least five minutes every time now, even when he really just needed to use the toilet. His parents had been concerned at first, as parents were prone to be. But they had gotten used to it, as humans were prone to do.

Besides, Light was a genius. He was allowed to have his quirks.

He reached into his pocket, fished out his phone. He thumbed out a familiar number, lifted the phone to his ear. He nearly sighed in relief when the voice rang out on the other end without any waiting, but he didn't, because it wouldn't project the right air to the person on the other end of the line.

"Naomi-san, turn on your TV."

His voice sounded normal, unflappable. Of course, it was all fairly useless when he forgot to use her alias. Stupid panic. Stupid emotions.

"I did. It's on right now."

Naomi Misora was on the other end, and she was currently standing in the middle of her living room, one arm dangling at her side with a TV remote hanging loosely in her grasp. The other hand was holding her cell phone, pressed up to the side of her head. She was currently staring horror-struck at her Television screen, and with good reason.

"Light-kun," Her voice was soft, whispery. If they had noticed it, if Sayu had noticed it, who else had noticed it?

"Why are we on TV?"

"Naomi-san, you need to stay calm-" Footsteps sounded outside, in the hall. "Naomi-san, I need to go. I'll call you." He didn't wait for a response as he hung up on her, and in one smooth motion, he slipped his phone into his pocket and dropped his hands into his side like he hadn't just been having a nerve-wracking phone call, one hand combing through his hair.

The door to the bathroom swung open, and Sayu stepped in.

* * *

The funeral was in a few days.

He had gotten the call last week, when he had been filing a request for vacation time. The plan had been to go see Naomi.

Obviously, that wasn't happening.

He was staying with her parents, the very same ones the had so dreaded meeting the day of The Earthquake. Her father was actually quite nice, as it turned out.

But of course, that didn't matter anymore, because Naomi Misora was dead and gone, and she might've as well have taken the sun with her. He remembered watching her partner at the FBI breaking down when she heard the news, sinking to her knees and slamming a fist into a wall over and over and over as she vowed revenge.

Her father was trying to continue as normal- watching TV, sleeping, eating, going to work and keeping a level head. (He wasn't doing a very good job. How could he, when his daughter was _gone_?)

Her mother was attempting to cope by baking, as strange as it sounded.

(Naomi had liked to bake. She had loved sweets. Once, she had fought a gangly little boy with clothes far to big for him for the last slice of strawberry cake at a bakery. Someone had broken a table, the precious cake lost in the battle, and the boy's grandfather had magicked all the consequences away with money.)

(That was the day he fell in love with her.)

Her mother spent the days in the kitchen now, kneading dough and baking pastries and chopping fruit and nuts and chocolate. She'd emerge every few hours with some new sweet, usually with a sad, far-off sounding comment that Naomi would love it.

He hadn't even seen her brother- Alex had buried himself in his studies at To-Oh university, and the plan was to never come out.

Raye himself was following her father's strategy, and that was how everything happened the way it did. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to break down the way Linder had and shut himself away from the world.

He wanted it so badly.

But Naomi had hated it when he cried, so he wouldn't. Instead, he was spending the evening on her family's couch, sitting next to her parents. The news buzzed on the TV screen before them, and the fresh baklava Miss Misora had made was growing cold, sitting untouched on plates resting on their laps.

They were playing some clip on the news, something about a kid in a black hoodie catching a truck. Special effects, the rational part of his brain whispered.

(The other part of his brain whispered memories to him instead, memories of Naomi crying and screaming about the noise when it was perfectly quiet, the love of his life sobbing and begging for sleep pills with her hands over her ears.)

He almost missed it.

* * *

"-this morning. Several people had stepped forward already either claiming to be the Metahuman in the black hoodie, or claiming to have information on him-"

 _Click._

Mello pulled his hand back from the radio knobs as Matt pulled up next to a warehouse.

"So who was that?"

"Who was what?"

"Alright, everybody out."

Behind him, A unlocked her door with a click and swung it open.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. The Freak in the hoodie."

Mello's boots crunched against gravel as he swung out of his seat, slamming his door shut behind him.

"Oh, you'll be meeting him soon. Your friend's already met him."

"So Hercules is your leader?"

Mello snorted as they started off towards the warehouse.

"Hercules?"

A shrugged. "Super strength," she said simply.

He smirked. "Not super strength, actually."

A's hair rustled as she cocked her head to one side, the way a bird did. "Then what is it?"

He smirked again as Matt pushed the warehouse door open.

"Guess."

* * *

Raye jumped to his feet. His plate tumbled off his lap loudly, landing with a clatter as a thin crack split it in half. Room-temperature pastry smeared across the floor as his mouth gaped open, eyes wide. Behind him, Naomi's mother made a sound like she was gagging on her tongue, and her father let out a choked half-sob.

They had seen it too. He wasn't crazy. This was real. (Or there were all delusional with grief. He stamped on that possibility, no matter how likely it actually was.)

"Was that..."

Behind him, Naomi's father openly started to cry, and her mother's breath sped up much, much faster than was normally.

"Naomi..."

(The sun was back.)

* * *

Sayu still had little grains of rice sticking to her face, and there was a patch of smeared miso on one cheek. She smiled at him faux-innocently.

"What do you want, Sayu?" Now, he loved his sister, really, but sometimes stuff like this happened, and he had to reexamine why, exactly, he hadn't shipped her off the New York or something by this point.

Sayu stopped smiling and set her jaw. "I want you to do me a favor."

* * *

"Hmm..." A stared up at the warehouse ceiling. "...Was the truck made of metal?"

Ahead of her, Matt chuckled. "It's not magnetics. And it isn't metal manipulation either."

"Damn. I have no idea then. I haven't even seen the footage." She frowned. "Why are we meeting your 'fearless leader' in a warehouse again?"

"Because," Matt chimed cheerily, "He's a paranoid bastard.'  
"Ah." A made a disgruntled sound in the back of her throat and brought a hand up to cover her nose.

"Holy shit, what's that smell?"

* * *

"Nii-san, I've been sneaking out of the house for a while."

Their bathroom was clean- a nice, gleaming little space shaped out of white. The shower curtain, the bathmat, and the toothbrushes were the only exceptions to the otherwise blank color scheme.

"Tou-san almost caught me the other day. I need you to cover for me, or else I point out that you're in the video with the man in black and that woman."

It was not the best spot for convincing yourself this was not happening.

Light sighed and pressed one hand to his forehead. "It won't be on the news forever, Sayu."

"No, but the videos will be on the internet forever."

Light sighed and pressed a hand to his face.

"Sayu, I'm not helping you sneak out of the house."

"Okay." Sayu had been leaning against the door frame, and she pushed away from it. "Then I'm going to go tell Tou-san and Kaa-san where you really were at eleven AM. Be right back."

She made it two steps down the hallway before Light agreed.

"Okay, Sayu, I'll help you. But you have to tell me where you're going, okay?" He really didn't want to do this. His baby sister shouldn't be sneaking out at night, and he most certainly shouldn't be covering for her. But even he couldn't get all those videos off the internet. Sayu's shoulders drooped at his concerned expression, and she sighed.

"I'm just meeting a friend, Nii-san. Don't worry, I'll be fine!" She smiled.

"...Okay. But if I think I need to, I'll tell them, okay Sayu?"  
"Okay, Nii-san."

That was fine.

If she happened to think it was necessary, she'd tell them Light's secret too.

* * *

"I think it's coming from over here!" Mello reached down and flipped a wooden crate over, and Matt and A pulled it off to the side. Matt was breathing heavily, and A leaned forward and rested her chin on the box's edge.

"Did you find it?"

"Yeah," He said stiffly, "I did."

"Whatddya mean... oh." Matt peered around the side of the wooden box and nodded, and A parroted the motion a beat later, her face only a shade or two paler. And across from her, Mello swallowed and stared down his nose at the source of the stench.

So it was _that_ warehouse.

They were staring down at a dead body, stripped clean of all clothes and belongings. It wasn't exactly uncommon, going through the pockets of the dead. When you were a homeless bum, all that mattered was your own continued lifespan, and nothing else. He knew this wasn't the first body he and Matt had seen, and he was almost certain it was the same for A. It probably was if she'd had tantrums like the one from earlier before. Even so, there was always something about staring down at the dead, decomposing corpse of a man you had marched to his death.

Osoreda's 'grave'-robber had left him lying face down, and some of his features were still distinguishable.

He stepped back as Matt walked around back to the side of the wooden box, and the warehouse filled with a rubbing, grating sort of sound as A and Matt shoved the crate back into place.

"...So," A said eventually, "When's this leader guy gonna get here? And B will be with him, right?"

Matt shrugged. "Probably. And I have no idea when L's gonna get here."

"...His name is 'L'? As in the _letter_ , _L_?"

Matt shrugged and lit another cigarette. "Don't sound so surprised, Puppeteer. Your name's A."

Mello snorted, raised an eyebrow. "Puppeteer?"

She sighed. "He gave me a dorky name for no apparent reason."

"Hey! It isn't dorky!"

"Ah. Don't worry. He does that to everyone."

"Well, now I just feel sorry for the general populace."

"Hey! I'm still here, y'know!"

"We know."

Matt clutched at his heart, face twisting in faux-hurt.

"Aw, Mels! I felt that! And A! That hurt, from a lovely l-"  
"If you don't want everyone who comes within a ten-foot radius suddenly noticing your dick and the nearest sharp object, you won't finish that sentence."

A smiled to match her cheery tone, and Mello blinked, wide-eyed.

"...Can she do that?"

Matt shrugged. "No idea. Probably. Maybe. If she wanted to."

"Oh, believe me, I want to." A scowled and pulled up the hood of her rain coat. "Jeez, how much longer do we have to wait? I mean, aside from the dead body and all, it's been _preeetty_ boring."

And behind them, the door swung open.

* * *

It was February tenth, and Misa wasn't allowed to be sad anymore. The day of her family's deaths had come and gone, and it was time to put on a smiling paper face again.

But regardless of how she was supposed to act, how she had acted for the past two (three? She couldn't remember) years, Misa had decided to give herself a break.

Obviously, that had been a bad idea.

She had two cell phones, one for business and one for personal affairs. Both had been ringing all afternoon, and she had lasted about half an hour before she scowled, threw her arms up in the air, and muted the both of them. She had checked her Caller ID first though, and all the calls had been from her manager, from agents. She had listened to one of their messages, out of curiosity. It hadn't been much, just a giant apology joined with inquiries of why she had stormed away from lunch this... afternoon? Morning? Noon-ish, the time around eleven and twelve- it had never felt right to call it the morning or the afternoon, not to her. She didn't have a name for that time yet. Maybe she should invent one.

But none of that was important right now. Because Misa-Misa had gotten _angry_ , and now this was happening.

* * *

"B." A's voice was flat with worn exasperation, and when she continued speaking, it was not a question. "What did you do."

There were two people in the doorway.

One of them was B.

One of them barely looked human- this 'L', probably.

And both of them looked like they'd been thrown off the Empire State Building.

"I didn't do anything," B mumbled through puffy lips. One of his cheeks was badly swollen, and the other side of his face was covered in little cuts and scratches. There was a dried trickle of blood under his nose, he was limping.

And that wasn't the half of it.

A rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Liar."

B ignored her and closed the space between them, peering over her shoulder when he reached her.

"Who are they?"

"Matt and Mello," The-probably-L said, answering for her. "They... work for me, to put it simply."

B turned, so he was standing next to A now. He crossed his arms, and A uncrossed her's.

"So they're Freaks too?"

L shrugged. "If you want to call them that, then yes."

Matt smiled behind them and cheekily raised a hand. "I prefer the term 'superhero'!"

"Ignore him," A said. "He's a freak."

"A! That one hurt!"

"Dick," She called out sweetly. "Pointy objects. Ten-foot radius!"

"Sorry! Sorry!"

"So." B had been looking over her shoulder, and they both turned to face L. "I suppose you know why you're here?"

"Yeah." It was B who answered, as he slipped his hands in his pockets. "You want us to decide whether we want to join you or not, right? All that crap?"

"Something like that." L's voice was a flat monotone, and it grated on A's nerves. She held her hands up and spread her fingers.

"Give us ten minutes."

* * *

She wasn't stupid, not when the camera stopped rolling. She was actually quite intelligent- maybe not genius, but certainly above the usual standards.

But being cute kept you alive in the modeling world, the latter of which was basically the equivalent of an ocean, filled with bloodthirsty sharks. And if being a ditz kept her alive and whole and generally shark-free, than be a ditz she would.

But all thoughts of intelligence and survival aside- this was her fault. She was on her computer right now, scrolling through the names of the dead and injured.

She did this. It wasn't a coincidence. Misa's emotions did funny things to people. This was just a variation.

A variation that happened to take place after she was already in a limo, far away from where the incident had happened.

There was a missing link somewhere. She just had to find it.

* * *

"Haha! This is awesome!"

Out of all the things he had expected out of life, sharing a motorcycle with a hot blonde was not one of them. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't enjoying it. No, he was enjoying it immensely.

Motorcycles were awesome, after all.

In front of him, the woman rolled her eyes and said, "Shut up."

"No!"

She had been waiting for them outside the warehouse, leaning by the door with one leg pulled up and a hand to her mouth, cupping a cigarette. A and L had gotten into Matt's car, and the woman- Wedy, she had introduced herself- had wheeled a motorcycle out from around the corner, pulled a simple black helmet out of a bag, and told him to get on.

Separating him and A- that had been a smart move, he had to give this L guy that much. Well, A had said he was called L. It wasn't the guy's real name, obviously, but still. That was a weird alias to pick when you lived in Japan, where they didn't actually _have_ a pronunciation of the letter L. At least he and A had aliases could actually be used.

Wedy swerved to avoid a car and the motorcycle leaned. It nearly went down on its side, and B laughed again.

The ride lasted about another fifteen minutes, and he managed to crack Wedy about ten minutes in, when he saw her smirk with him in the sideview mirror. They pulled up in front of a small, relatively normal-looking house in the suburbs. It was painted a dull green, and Matt's car was parked in the driveway. They pulled up behind the car, and B jumped off before the bike fully stopped. He landed sprawled across the lawn, with his ass in the air and his head under his chest.

To her credit, Wedy didn't bat so much as an eyelash when he did. She set about to parking her motorcycle, and then she took off her helmet and hung it on one of the handlebars by the straps. She was wearing a black spandex catsuit, and it made her look like a character out of a comic book. That probably didn't help discourage Matt's naming tirade. (Apparently, he knew what B could do, because Matt had leaned out the window and shouted out a codename he hadn't quite made out as the car backed out.)

Wedy lit a cigarette and stared at him, taking in excitedly wide eyes and the close-to-glasgow-smile. The door to the house swung open behind them, and Wedy looked at it over her shoulder.

"Hello, Illusion!" Matt was leaning out of the doorway, one hand positioned inside to keep him from falling. "I see you've met Glitch!"

Illusion wasn't the worst name he could get, he supposed. He could've gotten stuck with Copy Machine instead. Although, that would be pretty funny...

"Wedy," She corrected, and managed to pointedly blow out a cloud of smoke in Matt's general direction.

Matt shook his head. "Nah. Glitch is cooler."

Wedy snorted as B pushed himself to his feet, and they started towards the house.

"Whatever you say." She reached into a pocket of her catsuit and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. She opened them with a snap and slid them on, hiding her eyes away from the world. "I assume everything went well."

"Yep!" Matt's smile stretched a bit more and he stepped out of the way to let them through the doorway.

"She's with L right now, I think. He's doing his thing." B tensed.

"He's using his power on her?"  
Matt closed the door behind them and blinked behind his goggles. Well, at least he thought he did. He couldn't really tell.

"Huh... Oh, no. He's just being weird. You'll understand once you meet with him."

Wedy smiled.

"Don't worry, brat. She'll be fine."

There was a clock hanging on the wall behind her. It was late, apparently. Later than it should've been.

"Despite what he's willing to do... I doubt he'd kill someone in front of Near."

B's eyes widened.

There was a decisively angry snap of a chocolate bar breaking in two.

And behind them all, the clock struck ten.

* * *

"Naomi-san."

He was standing on the balcony outside his room, cell phone pressed to his ear and the doors shut behind him.

"I need you to get on the internet. Find as many copies and versions of that video as you can. Find them all. Scroll through all commentary on each video. See if anyone has noticed us. Contact me when you are finished and report the results. If I give you other directions, follow those. Understood?"

He sounded like he did when he hypnotized people. And on the other line, Naomi made no comment on that.

"Okay," She said as she sat down on her couch and pulled a wireless computer Light had procured for her onto her lap. Where or how he had gotten it, she had no idea.

"For now, stay out of the public eye. We cannot risk someone noticing you in that video and connecting the dots. It's too late to postpone your fake body being found, but we might be able to stop any other connections from popping up."

She didn't ask what dots they couldn't risk being connected.

"Okay."

Light gave a nod that didn't really serve any purpose, and shut his cell phone with a loud click.

Had he been just a bit more observant and just a bit less distracted, he might've- no, would've- noticed the person staring at him, the figure lurking behind the corner of a wall and looking up at the balcony. But as it was?

He didn't.

* * *

"Pause it."

Two simple words. A hand held out in the international sign for 'stop'.

And just like that, the order was carried out. The video froze on the wall it was being projected on, showing off a man in a black hoodie with his hand mere inches from the underbelly of a metal truck.

"Rewind."

Colorful flashings of pixels, and, a few minutes later, another command.

"Stop. Right there." This order was obeyed as well.

"...How interesting." The man who liked to fancy himself leader of this little operation smirked and propped his head up on one fisted hand. Around him, seven separate men stared at the frozen, blurred image of an unconscious teenager being carried away by a boy with red hair.

(Something has begun.)

* * *

 _Wow! You guys don't happen to think that something could be... An actual plot, do you? Cause I honestly have no idea. Hopefully, the next chapter won't be two months late! Remember to drop a review and tell me whatcha think!_


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